Quotes About Yearning

Gatsby looked at Daisy in a way that every young girl wanted to be looked at

she awoke often to lie and wish for that presence beside her—inanimate yet breathing—still Jeff.

Then Rosalind began popping into his mind again, and he found his lips forming her name over and over.

I tried to go then, but they wouldn't hear it; perhaps my presence made them feel more satisfactorily alone.

He felt persistently that the girl was beautiful—then of a sudden he understood: it was her distance, not a rare and precious distance of soul but still distance, if only in terrestrial yards.

As he sat on the side of the bed, he felt the room, the house and the night as empty. In the next room Nicole muttered something in her sleep. For him time stood still and then every few years accelerated in a rush, like the quick re-wind of a film, but for Nicole the years slipped away by clock and calendar and birthday, with the added poignance of her perishable beauty.

and there would be more drunkenness than wine in the softness of her eyes on his.

Don't say wife. I'm your mistress. Wife's such un ugly word.

And that taught me you can't have anything, you can't have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. It's like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it—but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you've got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone.

She seems hopeful and normally hungry for life — even rather romantic.

He felt persistently that the girl was beautiful – then of a sudden he understood: it was her distance, not a rare and precious distance of soul but still distance, if only in terrestrial yards. The autumn air was between them, and the roofs and the blurred voices. Yet for a not altogether explained second, posing perversely in time, his emotion had been nearer to adoration than in the deepest kiss he had ever known.

It seemed a tragedy to want nothing – and yet he wanted something, something. He knew in flashed what is was – some path of hope to lead him towards what he thought was an imminent and ominous old age.

He wanted a world that was like walking through rain

She looked up at him as he took a step toward the door; she looked at him without the slightest idea as to what was in his head, she saw him take another step in slow motion, turn and look at her again, and she wanted for a moment to hold him and devour him, wanted his mouth, his ears, his coat collar, wanted to surround him and engulf him.

He was in love with every pretty woman he saw now, their forms at a distance, their shadows on a wall.

He was tempted to lean over and kiss away her tears.

I'm not fit to touch her, he cried aloud to the four walls. I'm not fit to touch her little hand. Nevertheless, he went out to look for her.

Daisy put her arm through his abruptly but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It has seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.

A chi poteva interessare, in quella calura, di chi fossero le labbra ardenti che aveva baciato, quale tersa avesse inumidito la tasca del pigiama sul suo cuore!

Mientras hablaba, el oficial la miraba de la forma en que toda chica sueña que alguna vez la miren.

Gloria was sure she wanted but to read and dream and be fed tomato sandwiches and lemonades by some angelic servant still in a shadowy hinterland. Between paragraphs Anthony would come and kiss her as she lay indolently in the hammock….

But I didn't call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone - he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling.

Then it was all true. I saw the skins of tigers flaming in his palace on the Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with their crimson-lighted depths, the gnawings of his broken heart.

I could settle down if women were different, he said. If I didn't understand so much about them, if women didn't spoil you for other women, if they had only a little pride. If I could go to sleep for a while and wake up into a home that was really mine - why, that's what I'm made for, Paula, that's what women have seen in me and liked in me. It's only that I can't get through the preliminaries any more.