Quotes About Yearning

I read Greek myths. I read about far off places, Venice and Paris. I read about men who searched for things they could not find at home, and women who fell in love with the wrong person and waited for the arrival of their beloved for so long that a year was no different from a single day. The same thing was happening to me. Years were passing. I was already a woman, and I still wasn't done reading.

I cast myself at him, like a fool, but he didn't see me. And then one day he noticed I was beautiful and he wanted me. He broke me off and took me with him, in his hands, and I didn't care that I was dying until I actually was.

There was a spark inside that holiest of holy places that made people want to possess it, and what men yearn for they often destroy.

What did we know about those closest to us, really? No one ever dared to speak plainly about desire; no one said the word out loud.

Desire had a way of making a person oddly courageous.

She wishes he would come to her tonight, climb in through the window to lie down beside her and explain how it's possible to love someone so much and still manage to carry on when you have to let them go.

Here lies the life I might have had once upon a time, the man I might have loved for all my life, the days we might have had.

You wanted a blue rose, Brock said. Didn't you? Wasn't that the whole point? Doesn't everyone want what they cannot have?(Elinor) Here's what I think: it's the quest that matters.(Brock)

To want someone so much could be a terrible thing, or it could be the best hope a man could have.

Lust was a story I knew. There were many women I took to bed for the night. I yearned for them in the moment, but in the morning, any lover I'd had was already claimed by the past, even if she was still calling my name.

I wondered if all creatures were drawn to what was dangerous or if we merely wanted light at any cost and were willing to burn for our desires.

When a star reaches for you, it is difficult to look away.

There he is, in the fading light, certain of what he wants, certain of her. If Gillian were speaking to her sister, or more correctly, if Sally were speaking to her, Gillian would draw her over to the window to get a look. Isn't he beautiful? That's what she would have said if she and Sally had been talking. I wish I deserved him, she would have whispered into her sister's ear.

They learned that sometimes the most dangerous thing of all in matters of live was to be granted your heart's desire.

As for Franny, she wanted what she most often experienced in her dreams. To be among the birds. She preferred them to most human beings, their grace, their distance from the earth, their great beauty. Perhaps that was why they always came to her. In some way, she spoke their language.

Some things aren't destined to be no matter how you might want them.

this occurred only once in a person's life, and then only if he was lucky. It happened the way things happen in a dream. A door opens, a person calls your name, your heart beats faster, and everything is familiar, yet you don't know where you are. You are falling, you're in a house you don't recognize and yet you want to be here, you have actually wanted to be here all of your life

Love could do that to some people and they wouldn't even know much they'd missed out on; they simply remained in the place where love had left them, while the whole world spun around.

I have wondered all my life what I am made of, if there is straw inside of me, or a beating heart, or if I simply burned for all I did not have.

She begged for time to stop, for clocks to break, for every star to remain fixed. But none of that happened.

What she feels for him is so deep, she aches. She supposes this is what people refer to when they say the pangs of love, as if your innermost joy cannot help but cause you anguish as well.

Before she can stop herself, she thinks about desire, how it lives within you and yet is separate, surfacing when it chooses, without permission, in the harsh afternoon light, at the moment when you least expect to find it.

She wishes she had time to run around the block once or twice; maybe then she wouldn't feel as if she were about to burn up or shatter.

Somehow, what they'd had was already over, and she hadn't even been aware of the end. This happened with roses: it was possible to take them for granted all summer as they wound along fences and gates, and then in September, when they faded, how beautiful they'd once been suddenly took hold. That was when people began to yearn for them, and all winter long they'd watch the bare branches for buds, vowing that this time they'd be grateful for all that they had.