Quotes About Yearning

how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you?

I have no sounds that could serve to soothe me, no violoncello like him, no lament that anyone would recognize as a lament because it sounds subdued, in an inexpressibly tender language. I have only these lines on the yellowish paper and words that are never new, for they keep saying the same thing through an entire life.

Books have no life; they lack feeling maybe, and perhaps cannot feel pain, as animals and even plants feel pain. But what proof have we that inorganic objects can feel no pain? Who knows if a book may not yearn for other books, its companions of many years, in some way strange to us and therefore never yet perceived?

There is no suffering if you don't want anything.

like his whole organic being aspired to be a French cruller.

I was overcome by a sense of how much more there was in his life than in mine, by the things to do and distances to travel, while I never had done anything or gone anywhere, and never would.

In the morning when I saw Ivan's name in the in-box I almost started to cry. It reminded me of a kind of torture I had read about where afterward the captors returned your senses to you one by one, and you felt so grateful that you told them everything.

Is something the matter?" asked Hannah. "You're not your usual cheerful self." "I'm feeling kind of down," I said. "Did something happen?" "I like someone who doesn't like me," I said. I had thought of it as an approximation, but once I said it, it felt like the truth. •

It was terrible to think that he was in this city, possibly very nearby, but I couldn't see him or talk to him because he didn't love me. I couldn't be with him for one minute, not even for the weird leftover hours that nobody else wanted, like from one to three a.m. on a Wednesday.

I thought about how wonderful it would be to walk around with him until the following morning. I really felt that way, even though he stressed me out so much, and all we ever did was mishear each other and say "What?" all the time.

Do you think it's going to rain?" I asked. "Yes. Why?" My heart quickened. "I don't know," I said. Then I realized I wanted it to rain because maybe Ivan and his family would come back to Budapest a day early and Ivan might call me. I knew there were a lot of flaws in this reasoning. But my body didn't know.

I think I'm falling in love with you. Every day it's harder for me to see the common denominator, to understand what counts as a thing. All the categories that make up a dog—they go blurry and dissolve, I can't tell what anything is anymore. Chills go up the backs of my arms and songs go around my head. "[If I Must Be Put to Death, Let It Be] by Your Aristocratic Little Hand.

but I couldn't see him or talk to him because he didn't love me. I couldn't be with him for one minute, not even for the weird leftover hours that nobody else wanted, like from one to three a.m. on a Wednesday." "'In Turkey? You wouldn't have a nervous breakdown. You'd give them a nervous breakdown.' I forgave him for a lot when he said that. I forgave him for almost everything.

but even with Varenka, Koznyshev almost proposed to her when they were picking mushrooms. Koznyshev had therefore at least contemplated having sex with Varenka. There were no women in that book with whom nobody thought about having sex.

Give her the continent and she wanted the hemisphere.

She stared at me, like day stares at an hourglass and night, the sand trickling through time; the sea disappearing to eyes in the dark. But I hear her waves coming in, as she whispers one last chance goodbye.

Loss, this was what he felt. Loss and deprivation. One man owns, another man craves - the craving far more passionate than the dull pleasures of ownership. How galling not to have when you were the type who deserved to have - yes, deserved.

There is, after all, no pleasure like that given by a woman who really wants to see you.

I wondered whether he was trying to return to a place that no longer existed. Isn't that always the case when we try to go home again?

The hunger of imagination, the desire and pursuit of the whole, take origin from the realization that something is missing, from awareness of incompleteness.

What he had yearned to embrace was not the flesh but a downy spirit, a spark, the impalpable angel that inhabits the flesh.

I did not know how to reach him, how to catch up with him... The land of tears is so mysterious.

Tessie Moran, eighteen and not yet in love, was dreaming of handsome young men and moonlight. She could not easily be roused from her enchantment.

I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one.