Quotes About Yearning

The desire for reassurance. And, equally, to be reassured. (The itch to ask whether I'm still loved; and the itch to say, I love you, half-fearing that the other has forgotten, since the last time I said it.)

a craving for the cloud of unknowing beyond knowledge and for the silence beyond speech

The early Romantic sought superiority by desiring, and by desiring to desire, more intensely than others do.

How far from the beginning are we? When did we first start to feel the wound? … This staunchless wound, the great longing for another place. To make this place another.

Because my wanting isn't strong—it fears risks, it demands approval…

And it is in this gap between resemblance and identity that nostalgic desire arises. The nostalgic is enamored of distance, not of the referent itself. Nostalgia cannot be sustained without loss.

And if I'm homesick it's a window shrouded with ice where a young girl traces a name on the glass that's beginning to look like my name. It's the sky taking shape before me in the silence like a ghost who makes nothing come true.

If, indeed, that was love, it wasn't enough.

She wasn't at peace the way that artist painted her. She was leaning forward, and the rigidness of her spine showed the ache in her soul. She was a desperate woman with frailties just like her, temptations just liker her, a woman who had needs, a woman who loved almost to the point of there being no more her anymore, a woman who probably cried too much, just like her, a woman afraid, wanting to believe rather than believing...

She remembered wishing, one particular morning... that she might someday have someone to write to, that she could write at the end of a letter full of love and news, As ever, your loving Magdalena Elisabeth.

Her chest ached like a dull wound when she realized that her silence did not cause him a moment's reflection or curiosity. When she looked out the corner of her eye at him, she could not tell what she meant to him... Another wish that never would come true, she saw then, even if she lived forever, was that he, that someone, would look at her not as an artistic study, but with love.

The only place Aletta and I could be together unseen was just under the rafters in the church tower, a circumstance that propelled us into an earlier intimacy than what we would have known had we been permitted to walk together Sunday afternoons under the wide sky.

Was it wrong for me to want more than constrained existence? Wrong to hunger for change, new faces, a full life? Surprises to please my eyes and ears?

How does one end a moment like this? It would kill her to feel him pull away. She had to be first. In a moment. One moment more. Yes. Now

I see her in my dreams," he said. "Every night.

The pressure of his mouth eased. He drew away, holding her at arm's length. He filled her vision, broad shoulders and shaggy head framed by the crags and cliffs of Connemara. He had a look of astonished delight on his face, while dangerous banked fires smoldered in his eyes. Still gripping her shoulders, he stepped back and said, "Look me in the eye, Caitlin MacBride, and tell me you've been kissed before.

He was Odysseus one moment, the Ancient Mariner the next, an ordinary man like Tom Joad or a seeker like Douglas Adams's hitchhiker. He wandered in search of a past that existed only inside himself. He sought fields of flowers and towering cliffs that jutted out over the ocean and mountaintops that pierced the clouds.

Make me a part of this place. Make me a part of Caitlin. Please, God, I love her so.

He was a hopeless romantic.

Good God, what must I do to win you?

The human heart has a way of holding on for as long as it takes, until it has been fulfilled.

No amount of liquor could make him forget the things he yearned to erase from his mind—

I want you in every way a man can want a woman, and in ways we've yet to invent. Every single day and night. Now, come here.

Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star.