Quotes About Longing

Then after a long time Annie wasn't a little girl anymore. She was a big girl and I was so much in love with her that I lived in a dream. In the dream my heart seemed to be ready to burst, for it seemed that the whole world was inside it swelling to get out and be the world. But that summer came to an end. Time passed and nothing happened that we had felt so certain at one time would happen.

Lois looked edible, and you know it was tender all the way through, a kind of mystic combination of filet mignon and a Georgia peach aching for the tongue and ready to bleed gold.

Hell, a man can lie there and want something so bad and be so full of wanting it he just plain forgets what it is he wants. Just like when you are a boy and the sap first rises and you think you will go crazy some night wanting something and you want it so bad and get so near sick wanting it you near forget what it is.

But why should I lie here longer? I am not dead yet … And the world's way is yet long to go, And I love the world even in my anger, And love is a hard thing to outgrow. —Robert Penn Warren, from "American Portrait: Old Style," Now and Then: Poems, 1976-1978<.i> (Random House, 1978)

I did not understand my complex of feeling. Particularly as she was saying, 'Yes, I'm sorry I ever met you. Ever. If I hadn't I wouldn't have to go through this Awfulness, the awfulest part being that I'll remember you. Always.' — Robert Penn Warren, from "Goodbye," Uncollected Poems 1943-1989, The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren , ed. John Burt (Louisiana State University Press, 1998)

But our lives are the reasons why we want to live another time

If only I'd thought of the right words I would have held onto your heart. If only I'd thought of the right words I wouldn't be breaking apart, all my pictures of you.

Each night I lie and dream about the one Who kissed me and awakened my desire I spent a single hour with him alone And since that hour, my days are layed with fire.

Is it Rilla-my-Rilla?' he asked, meaningly. Emotion shook rilla from head to foot. Joy-happiness-sorrow-fear. every passion that had wrung her heart in those four long years seemed to surge up in her soul for a moment as the deeps of being were stirred. She had tried to speak; at first voice would not come. THen 'Yeth' said Rilla.

You see, she concluded miserably, when I can call like that to him across space--I belong to him. He doesn't love me--he never will--but I belong to him.

I've come home in love with loneliness

Yes, it's beautiful,' said Gilbert, looking steadily down into Anne's uplifted face, 'but wouldn't it have been more beautiful still, Anne, if there had been no separation or misunderstanding . . . if they had come hand in hand all the way through life, with no memories behind them but those which belonged to each other?

I don't want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want YOU. [....] Sunbursts and marble halls may be all very well, but there is more 'scope for imagination' without them. And as for the waiting, that doesn't matter. We'll just be happy, waiting and working for each other—and dreaming. Oh, dreams will be very sweet now.

Fairyland is the loveliest word because it means everything the human heart desires.

I've just been imagining that it was really me you wanted after all and that I was to stay here for ever and ever. It was a great comfort while it lasted. But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop and that hurts.

Desire grows by what it feeds on.

Nothing mattered much to me for a time there, after you told me you could never love me, Anne. There was nobody else -- there never could be anybody else for me but you. I've loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over my head in school.

it's so dreadful to have nothing to love — life is so empty — and there's nothing worse than emptiness…

I'm so glad you're here, Anne,' said Miss Lavendar, nibbling at her candy. 'If you weren't I should be blue…very blue…almost navy blue. Dreams and make-believes are all very well in the daytime and the sunshine, but when dark and storm come they fail to satisfy. One wants real things then. But you don't know this…seventeen never knows it. At seventeen dreams do satisfy because you think the realities are waiting for you further on.

Since ever the world was spinning And till the world shall end You've your man in the beginning Or you have him in the end, But to have him from start to finish And neither nor borrow nor lend Is what all of the girls are wanting And none of the gods can send

The boys like me as a pal but I don't believe anyone will ever really fall in love with me. Nonsense, said Emily reassuringly. Nine out of ten men will fall in love with you. But it will be the tenth I'll want, persisted Ilse gloomily.

I wish I were dead, or that it were tomorrow night,' groaned Phil.

Then the immortal heart of the woods will beat against ours and its subtle life will steal into our veins and make us its own forever, so that no matter where we go or how widely we wander we shall yet be drawn back to the forest to find our most enduring kinship.

She told herself that she longed greatly to go back to those dear merry days when life was seen through a rosy mist of hope and illusion, and possessed an indefinable something that had passed away forever. Where was it now--the glory and the dream?