Quotes About Longing

It wasn't that I wanted a husband and a baby; I didn't, or rather, I only wanted them the way I wanted to live to a hundred: someday, far off, never thinking about the particulars. But they meant life: she was living, and I wasn't.

There was no eager ache of hunger in my belly from the long day of cooking and cleaning without a pause; there was no joyful noise of too many people crammed in around the table, laughing and reaching for the platters. Looking down at my tiny feast only made me feel more desperately lonely.

But as if I'd told myself at the same time as him, I realized that was exactly what I was after. I wanted Sarkan. I wanted him to look up from among his heaped books and snap at me at the disorder I'd created. I wanted to know what he was doing, if the Wood had struck back. I wanted him to tell me how I could persuade the king to let Kasia go.

as a boy stands back from his earlier self mocking it and the light of fireflies blinking against an old fence has become as sad as it is lovely because so many hands are gone by now it is not that we wanted the light to be caught      but reached for that was it

The minute she heard him, she wished they could talk forever.

DESIRE—knowing what you want.

That which we want most is always in the embryonic distance of the future. Our power to acquire is always a decade or so behind our power to DESIRE! And, if we catch up with the thing we want we no longer want it!

Life is an everlasting question-mark! That which we want most is always in the embryonic distance of the future. Our power to acquire is always a decade or so behind our power to DESIRE! And, if we catch up with the thing we want we no longer want it!

Why did he write to her, "I can't live without you?" And why did she write to him "I can't live without you?" For he went west and she went east and they both lived.

One Parting Why did he write to her, I can't live without you? And why did she write to him, I can't live without you? For he went west, she went east, And they both lived.

When the rose's flash to the sunset Reels to the wrack and the twist, And the rose is a red bygone, When the face I love is going And the gate to the end shall clang, And it's no use to beckon or say, "So long"— Maybe I'll tell you then— some other time.

I HAVE ransacked the encyclopedias And slid my fingers among topics and titles Looking for you. And the answer comes slow. There seems to be no answer. Old-fashioned Requited Love I shall ask the next banana peddler the who and the why of it. Or—the iceman with his iron tongs gripping a clear cube in summer sunlight—maybe he will know.

There are hungers for a nameless bread out of the dust of the hard earth, out of the blaze of the calm sun.

But leave me a little love, A voice to speak to me in the day end, A hand to touch me in the dark room Breaking the long loneliness. In the dusk of day-shapes Blurring the sunset, One little wandering, western star Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow. Let me go to the window, Watch there the day-shapes of dusk And wait and know the coming Of a little love. —Carl Sandburg, from "At the Window," Chicago Poems (Dover Publications, 1994)

An ambition is a little creeper that creeps and creeps in your heart night and day, singing a little song, 'Come and find me, come and find me'.

Of all the passions that inspire a man in a battle, none, we have to admit, is so powerful and so constant as the longing for honor and reknown.

Apuré el último sorbo de café y ña contemplé en silencio unos instante. Pensé en lo mucho que deseaba refugiarme en aquella mirada huidiza que se temía transparente, vacía. Pensé en la soledad que iba a asaltarme aquella noche cuando me despidiece de ella, sin más trucos ni historias con que engañar su compañía. Pensé en lo poco que tenía que ofrecerle y en lo mucho que quería recibir de ella.

until that moment I had not understood that this was a story about lonely people, about absence and loss, and that that was why I had taken refuge in it until it became confused with my own life, like someone who has escaped into the pages of a novel because those whom he needs to love seem nothing more than ghosts inhabiting the mind of a stranger.

Perhaps for that very reason, I adored her all the more, because of the eternal human stupidity of pursuing those who hurt us the most.

Remember me, even if it's only in a corner and secretly. Don't let me go.

That day was turning out to be longer than The Brothers Karamazov.

Waiting is the rust of the soul.

I hoped my absence made them happy or at least made them forget that they weren't happy and never will be.

We looked at each other in the half-light, searching for words that didn't exist.