Quotes About Longing

Hanan Al-Shaykh

Desire, like the dead or an unpleasant meal, would keep returning--it was ultimately indigestible.

Surely you've noticed that most people live without love, spending their lives trying to find people they're not turned on by.

Born for disappointment, she only wanted what I couldn't give.

Most people don't know how to maximise their pleasure, they sexualise their pain. Surely you've noticed that most people live without love, spending their lives trying to find people they're not turned on by.

I could have ripped at those pages with my fingernails in order to get all of the material inside me.

Nije li erotika neutaziva glad koja samu sebe pothranjuje?

There may have been something identical about the way she fell prey to fear and to longing, namely, the act of falling prey to something, of being trapped in a craving--that fixation on a single thing, when the empty gaze forgets multiplicity or, taken over by craving and passion, considers nothing else. But that longing may also have opened up empires for her, strange, colorful empires she was at home in and could love with the living bliss that never changes.

we saw that what makes love, defined as desire, unbearable is the constant fear—that must accompany love—of losing its object.

Desire is truly directed toward a transcendent, transmundane future because it rests ultimately on the desire for an everlasting happy life.

Dios nos ha hecho para sí, y nuestros corazones nunca encontrarán reposo y satisfacción perfecta hasta que no lo encuentren en Él.

He said her name like it was something he'd already left behind. She could feel her heart twisting inside the walls of her chest.

She began to dread the moves but a part of her also itched for them, because it meant that she could stop trying to fit in and simply slip into the place where she belonged: the passenger seat of her father's truck as they barreled down the highway. They

Often the trials we mourn are really gateways into the good things we long for.

At first she was overjoyed that he would be with her, but then she recalled that human people could not live under the water, and he could only visit her father's palace as a dead man.

It was the last night that she would breathe the same air as he, or look out over the deep sea and up into the star-blue heaven. A dreamless, eternal night awaited her, for she had no soul and had not been able to win one.

Because she could not go near all these wonderful things, she longed for them all the more.

Now he is certainly sailing above, he on whom my wishes hang, and in whose hand I should like to lay my life's happiness. I will dare everything to win him and an immortal soul.

This was the last evening that she should breathe the same air with him or gaze on the starry sky and the deep sea. An eternal night, without a thought or a dream, awaited her.

Some things we pack away, stick in the back of the closet, never expect to see again ? but we can't quite make ourselves discard them. Like dreams, I guess.

Right now, even though he'd been dead for years, she wanted to collapse in her father's big arms and hear him tell her that everything would be all right. Do we ever outgrow that need?

Some men carry torches for old loves, and then some guys—not many, but some—get completely consumed by the torch's flames. It makes them nothing but long-term trouble for the follow-ups.

Children view their parents as both intrepid and omnipotent—yet here their parents are, gazing up at me, the doctor, with a fear-filled longing normally reserved for religious rapture. What

There are those rare moments in life- when you feel that jolt and it feels great and it hurts like hell, but you're feeling, really feeling and suddenly colors seem brighter and sounds have more clarity and foods taste better and you never, not even for a minute, stop thinking about him and you know, just know that he is feeling exactly the same way about you