Quotes About Yearning

What he wants is intimacy, but I can't give him that.

China does not exist. Nevertheless, she longs to be there.

on the Street of Dreams it was dream eat dream.

Most hearts say, I want, I want, I want, I want. My heart is more duplicitous, though to twin as I once thought. It says, I want, I don't want, I want, and then a pause. It forces me to listen

She had loved him, uselessly.

Why couldn't the two of them have gone on and on forever? Himself and Constance, sun and moon, each one of them shining, though in different ways. Instead of which he's here, forsaken by her, abandoned. In time, which fails to sustain him. In space, which fails to cradle him.

I'd wanted to leave home, but have it stay in place, waiting for me, unchanged, so I could step back into it at will.

She has never been in the presence, before, of two people who are in love with each other. She feels like a stray child, ragged and cold, with her nose pressed to a lighted window. A toy-store window, a bakery window, with fancy cakes and decorated cookies. Poverty prevents her entrance. These things are for other people; nothing for her.

I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, then at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish it were about love, or about sudden realizations important to one's life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow.

There was old sex in the room and loneliness, and expectation, of something without a shape or name. I remember that yearning, for something that was always about to happen and was never the same as the hands that were on us there and then, in the small of the back, or out back, in the parking lot, or in the television room with the sound turned down and only the pictures flickering over lifting flesh.

you can't change the past, Aunt Lou used to say. Oh, but I wanted to; that was the one thing I really wanted to do

Dream steals from its lair towards its prey.

You want to go back to where the sky was inside us

at this distance you're a mirage, a glossy image fixed in the posture of the last time I saw you. Turn you over, there's a place for the address. Wish you were here.

But all my love ever came to was a bad end. Red-hot shoes, barrels studded with nails. That's what it feels like, unrequited love.

It's an old word, fading now. Dearly did I wish. Dearly did I long for. I loved him dearly.

All she wants is for both of them to be different. Not very different, a little would do it. Same molecules, different arrangement. All she wants is a miracle, because anything else is hopeless.

Does she ever see him watching her through the picture window? Most likely. Does she think he's a lecherous old man? Very probably. But he isn't exactly that. How to convey the mix of longing, wistfulness, and muted regret that he feels? His regret is that he isn't a lecherous old man, but he wishes he were. He wishes he still could be.

All she wants is a miracle, because anything else is hopeless.

I'd wanted to leave home, but have it stay in place, waiting for me, unchanged, so I could step back into it at will.

She wants to jig and amble, she wants to lisp, she wants to suck the last slurp of essence out of his almost-voided cranium. Avaunt, wanton!

I'M STARVED FOR YOU

You say, Do you / love me, do you love me / I answer you: / I stretch your arms out / one to either side, / your head slumps forward.

On these occasions I read quickly, voraciously, almost skimming, trying to get as much into my head as possible before the next long starvation. If it were eating it would be the gluttony of the famished; if it were sex it would be a swift furtive stand-up in an alley somewhere.