#absence

It's hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he's okay. It's hard to be the one who stays. I keep myself busy. Time goes faster that way. I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I'm tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that's been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by absence? Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow? ↗

— Audrey Niffenegger

#love

Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have. ↗

— David Bowie

#absolute #challenging #confront #confrontation #corpse

In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress. ↗

— Leonard Cohen

#caress #done #dreams #good #good works

There were a lot of rumors spread about me. Of course, I didn't show up to defend myself, so my absence helped create even more. ↗

— Sean Young

#absence #course #create #defend #even

I said peace is sometimes narrowly interpreted; it's the absence of conflict between nations or something. But peace is more inherent, more basic to human life, human beings, what we feel about each other, what we feel about life around us and what we see in our future. ↗

— Muhammad Yunus

#absence #around #basic #beings #between

Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists... When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence. ↗

— Edmond de Goncourt

#been #begin #book #each #exists

Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity. ↗

— William Hazlitt

#difficulty #everything #grace #hesitation #incongruity

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice. ↗

— Baruch Spinoza

#absence #benevolence #confidence #disposition #justice

Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other. ↗

— Freya Stark

#any #art #dose #family #family life

In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness. ↗

— Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

#certain #far #find #furnishing #i