#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

Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#evidence #medicine #quip #wordplay #medicine

I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence. ↗

— Brendan Behan

#could #death #i #me #said

In the history of women's tennis the great players have come back from long absences with no problems. ↗

— Lindsay Davenport

#back #come #great #history #long

And as far as false hope, there is no such thing. There is only hope or the absence of hope-nothing else. ↗

— Patti Davis

#as far as #else #false #far #hope

The alarming thing in China is the almost total absence of primary care. Even in cities, there are no independent doctors' offices or neighborhood clinics, so people have to go to the hospital for every health care need. ↗

— Nancy Travis

#alarming #almost #care #china #cities

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

Where there is an absence of international political leadership, civil society should step in to fill the gap, providing the energy and vision needed to move the world in a new and better direction. ↗

— Daisaku Ikeda

#better #civil #civil society #direction #energy

Absence does not make the heart grow fonder, but it sure heats up the blood. ↗

— Elizabeth Ashley

#blood #does #fonder #grow #heart