Quotes About Longing

For years now I had convinced myself that the sadness of the memories weighed more and lasted longer than the moments of happiness themselves. So I had, through some crude emotional mathematics, decided it was better not to seek out love or companionship or even friendship.

No, she felt homesick, not for a place, but for a time. Maybe it wasn't homesickness at all. Maybe it was timesickness. She just missed those days when she was younger - seven, six, five, four years old - when she didn't know so much about the world. She missed, most of all, her mother.

By thinking of the cloud, I thirsted for the raindrop.

Want,' she told her, in a measured tone, 'is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely. Maybe you have a lack problem rather than a want problem. Maybe there is a life that you really want to live.

The craving for the thing is rarely met by the satisfaction of getting it. And so we crave more. And the cycle repeats. We are encouraged to want what will only make us want more. We are, in short, encouraged to be addicts.

Want is an interesting word. It means lack.

wanting is also lacking. That is what "want" means.

She imagined, now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn't reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed.

otherwise happiness will drip through us like water through a leaky bucket. The moment we want is the moment we are dissatisfied. The more we want, the more we will drip ourselves away.

We're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. —DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

Love was trapping me here.

my mind switches to what it would be like to be with her, to lose my way with her, to whisper longings into her ear, to devour and be devoured. To wake up in the same bed and talk and laugh and be in comfortable silence with her. To give her breakfast. Toast. Blackcurrant jam. Pink grapefruit juice. Maybe some watermelon. Sliced. On a plate. She would smile, and I see it in my mind, the smile, and I would dare to feel happy with another human being.

To want is to lack. That is what it means.

I traveled with my work. I went to Paris, Boston, Rome, São Paolo, Berlin, Madrid, Tokyo. I wanted to fill my mind with human faces, in order to forget Isobel's. But I achieved the opposite effect. By studying the entire human species, I felt more toward her specifically. By thinking of the cloud, I thirsted for the raindrop.

She had shrunk for him, but he still hadn't found the space he needed.

I have only been in love once in my life. I suppose that makes me a romantic, in a sense. The idea that you have one true love, that no one else will compare after they have gone. It's a sweet idea, but the reality is terror itself. To be faced with all those lonely years after. To exist when the point of you has gone.

Me sentaba a la luz de la mesita de noche para leer durante unas dos horas después de que Andrea se hubiera dormido, hasta que los ojos se me secaban y dolían, siempre buscando y sin encontrar nunca nada, pero con esa sensación de tenerlo casi al alcance de la mano.

An increased sexual imagination. (Fear of death often seems to counterbalance itself with thoughts of sex.)

wanted to be somewhere he had never been. I wanted somewhere where I didn't have to feel his ghost. But the truth is, it only half-works, you know? Places are places and memories are memories and life is fucking life.

Is there a life where we are still together?

To be part of nature was to be part of the will to live. When you stag too long in a place, you forget just how big and expanse the world is. You get no sense of length of those longitudes and latitudes. Just as, she supposed, it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person. But once you sense the vastness, once something reveals it, hope emerges, whether you want it or not, and it clings to you as stubbornly as lichen clings to rock.

Reading is added to that great pile of things—work, love, sexual prowess, the words they didn't say when they really needed to say them—that they are bound to feel a bit dissatisfied about.

Want,' she told her, in a measured tone, 'is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely. Maybe you have a lack problem rather than a want problem. Maybe there is a life that you really want to live.

Querer es una palabra muy curiosa. Querer implica carencia. A veces, si llenamos esa carencia con alguna cosa, el deseo original desaparece por completo. Quizá tu problema no es lo que quieres, sino aquello de lo que careces. Quizá exista una vida que realmente quieras vivir