Quotes About Absence

People are sometimes easily overlooked. The holes they leave behind when they aren't there any more are far harder to miss.

We all basically live in a world that we define by the people who have disappeared.

God's away, God's away, God's away on business. Business!

In the North, however, the wartime absence from Congress of southern representatives had the benefit of eliminating the opposition that had prevented federal aid to expand the railroad westward.

Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don't think it's any of that — it's helpless ... it's absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers ... and anger doesn't provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever." [Interview with CBS radio host Don Swaim, September 15, 1987.]

And sometimes, sitting in my chair I can feel the absence stretching out in all directions– like the deaf, defoliated silence just after a train has thundered past the platform, just before the mindless birds begin to chirp again –and the wildflowers that grow beside the tracks wobble wildly on their little stems, then gradually grow still and stand motherless and vertical in the middle of everything.

A key to keeping your husband is getting him to miss you. That keeps a marriage fresh.

the body is what we lean toward, tensing as it darts, dancing away. but it's the voice that enters us. even saying nothing. even saying nothing over and over absently to itself

Like a god, / I believe in nothing.

The window shades have all been removed. Nighttime is now free to encroach.

JOHNNA: "This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends . . ." VIOLET:—and then you're gone, and then you're gone, and then you're gone, and then you're gone—

There are empty rooms, and then there are rooms that feel crowded, corner to corner, with absence.

The missing aren't missing, they're only departed

The missing aren't missing, they're only departed, All minds keep all thoughts - so like gold - closely guarded

La muerte era eso: no ver más a alguien. O no haber visto nunca a alguien.

As a child I experienced loss for what I felt was withheld from me: the delicious milk, the mountains of flowers I could not roll in, the cousins I could not play with, a beautiful house on a plateau. As the years grew with me, I became aware of absences that impacted me directly and indirectly: the loss of place, of stories, of family and of citizenship.

We'll probably never see him again.

And although in many cases these unions proved happy enough, sailors being excellent husbands, often away and handy about the house when ashore, it did make for a curious gathering when the spouses were invited to a ball.

A sailor, who may be absent for years, throws impossible strains on his wife. If she is a woman of any degree of temperament at all there is of course the question of chastity; and in either case there is that of command or perhaps I should say of decision.

How you die out in me: down to the last worn-out knot of breath you're there, with a splinter of life.

There is also present in every human being, in everyone's biography-although sometimes harrowing cases of systematic neglect, present in the matter of absence, so if longing for that which never was there then too, deeply suspect, should have been.

I remember one party when we seemed to be absolutely stranded. Perhaps that was symbolic, Mr Turner. I mean everyone else gone and just Tusker and me, peering out into the dark waiting for transport that never turned up.

Bulmasayd?n, aramazd?n beni.

An absence of gringos visiting the city meant that it was easy to find a taxi; they surrounded and implored me.