Quotes About Longing

I hunger to commit the act of touch.

His mouth is on me, his hands, I can't wait and he's moving, already, love, it's been so long, I'm alive in my skin, again, arms around him, falling and water softly everywhere, never-ending.

and nostalgia swept through Jimmy like a sudden hunger.

Perhaps they were looking for passion; perhaps they delved into this book as into a mysterious parcel - a gift box at the bottom of which, hidden in layers of rustling tissue paper, lay something they'd always longed for but couldn't ever grasp.

Despite their cool poses they wear their cravings on the outside, like the suckers on a squid. They want it all.

He could never get used to her, she was fresh every time, she was a casketful of secrets. Any moment now she would open herself up, reveal to him the essential thing, the hidden thing at the core of her life, or of her life, or of his life--the thing he was longing to know. The thing he'd always wanted.

Now she imagines him dreaming. She imagines him dreaming of her, as she is dreaming of him. Through a sky the color of wet slate they fly towards each other on dark invisible wings.

you dangle on the leash of your own longing; your need grows teeth

Me, it's the heart: that's the part lacking. I used to want one: a dainty cushion of red silk dangling from a blood ribbon, fit for sticking pins in. But I've changed my mind. Hearts hurt. — Margaret Atwood, from "The Tin Woodwoman Gets a Massage ," Dearly: New Poems (Ecco, 2020)

On impulse he might die for her, but living for her would be quite different. He has no talent for monotony.

You'll be here but not here, a muscle memory, like hanging a hat on a hook that's not there any longer.

This is what I miss… not something that's gone, but something that will never happen.

Although he doesn't know it yet, she isn't his real life. But he is hers. This is painful.

I want to see what can be seen, of him, take him in, memorize him, save him up so I can live on the image, later: the lines of his body, the texture of his flesh, the glisten of sweat on his pelt, his long sardonic unrevealing face. I ought to have done that with Luke, paid more attention, to the details, the moles and scares, the singular creases; I didn't and he's fading. Day by day, night by night he recedes, and I become more faithless.

No one ever told you greed and hunger are not the same.

Dearly beloved, gathered here together in this closed drawer, fading now, I miss you. I miss the missing, those who left earlier. I miss even those who are still here. I miss you all dearly. Dearly do I sorrow for you.

That's who is waiting for me: an invisible man defined by a dotted line: the shape of an absence in your place at the table, sitting across from me, eating toast and eggs as usual or walking ahead up the drive, a rustling of the fallen leaves, a slight thickening of the air. It's you in the future, we both know that. You'll be here but not here, a muscle memory, like hanging a hat on a hook that's not there any longer.

We talked about our real mothers and how we wanted to know who they'd been. Perhaps we ought not to have shared so much, but it was very comforting. "I wish I had a sister," she said to me one day. "And if I did, that person would be you.

A puff of air—whuff!—hits his ears, blows out the candle. He can't be bothered relighting it, because the bourbon is taking over. He'd rather stay in the dark. He can sense Oryx drifting towards him on her soft feathery wings. Any moment now she'll be with him. He sits crouched in the chair with his head down on the desk and his eyes closed, in a state of misery and peace.

I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable.

God isn't what they say," she said. She said you could believe in Gilead or you could believe in God, but not both. That was how she had managed her own crisis. I said that I wasn't sure I would be able to choose. Secretly I feared that I would be unable to believe in either. Still, I wanted to believe; indeed I longed to; and, in the end, how much of belief comes from longing?

nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from. There's nobody here I can love, all the people I could love are dead or elsewhere. Who knows where they are or what their names are now? They might as well be nowhere, as I am for them. I too am a missing person.

Romance takes place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself, through a window clouded with dew. Romance means leaving things out: where life grunts and snuffles, romance only sighs. Does she want more than that –more of him? Does she want the whole picture?

This is what I feel like: this sound of glass. I feel like the word shatter. I want to be with someone