#longing

I been with strangers all day and they treated me like family. I come in here to family and you treat me like a stranger. ↗

— August Wilson

#family #family

The Marquess shrugged. “I’m a shadow. I do know I am a shadow, Iago. I know most of the time. It’s only when I cannot bear how everyone looks at me down here that I make myself forget it. Shadows are the other side of yourself. I had longings to be good, even then. I was just stronger than my wanting. I’m stronger than anything, really, when I want to be.” The Marquess’s hair turned white as the snow. “Do you know, we’re right underneath Springtime Parish? This place is the opposite of springtime. Everything past prime, boarded up for the season. Just above us, the light shines golden on daffodils full of rainwine and heartgrass and a terrible, wicked, sad girl I can’t get back to. I don’t even know if I want to. Do I want to be her again? Or do I want to be free? I come here to think about that. To be near her and consider it. I think I shall never be free. I think I traded my freedom for a better story. It was a better story, even if the ending needed work. ↗

— Catherynne M. Valente

#freedom #indecision #longings #shadows #wants

I looked forward to making friends at school, but I had come late and friendships had already been formed. I couldn’t find my way into their world. They seemed to have a secret code I couldn’t decipher. ↗

— Gloria Whelan

#belonging #friends #friendship #understanding #friendship

She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer. ↗

— T.H. White

#longing #love #pain #sorrow #unrequited-love

I like being on my own better than I like anything else, but I can't give up love. Maybe it's the tension between longing and aloneness that I need. My own funicular railway, holding in balance the two things most likely to destroy me. ↗

— Jeanette Winterson

#longing #love #solitude #love

Never let the meaning of your love light escape to the dark nothingness of oblivion. ↗

— Sorin Cerin

#longing #love #oblivion #life

Why now? Why not? Live or die, a man and a woman need love. There is a need in the race. We need to share. To belong. Perhaps you will die before the year is out. But remember this: to have may be taken from you, to have had never. Far better to have tasted love before dying, than to die alone. ↗

— David Gemmell

#love #need #love

You think embracing the longing while waiting for the right man is impossible? Well obviously you didn't get the memo. ↗

— Osayi Osar-Emokpae

#longing #love #relationship #love

Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it's something we can't easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? This civilisation of ours, perhaps it'll just collapse. And everything scatter, as you put it. ↗

— Kazuo Ishiguro

#chaos #civilization #destruction #fear #insecurity

I nibbled my lower lip. "If you could see into my past just by touching my back, you'd have a hard time resisting the temptation too." "I have a hard time keeping my hands off you without that added bonus. ↗

— Becca Fitzpatrick

#crescendo #hush-hush #longing #lust #nora-grey