Longed Off Quotes & Sayings

All my days I have longed equally to travel the right road and to take my own errant path. — Sigrid Undset

We took a cab to the hotel. We looked at each other on the way but neither of us spoke. I checked us in, and when we got to the room, we left the lights off. It seemed natural that we should walk over to the enormous windows, where we watched the urban mass of Shinjuku twinkling in the violet light around us. I looked out at the city from my lofty perch and thought of all the events that had led to this precise instant, this moment I had imagined and ridiculously longed for so many times and that I was now trying to savor even as I felt it slipping irrevocably away. At some point I felt her looking at me. I turned and reached out, tracing the outline of her face and neck with the back of my fingers, trying to burn all the details into my mind, wanting to have them with me later when she would be gone. — Barry Eisler

And the crazy part of it was even if you were clever, even if you spent your adolescence reading John Donne and Shaw, even if you studied history or zoology or physics and hoped to spend your life pursuing some difficult and challenging career, you still had a mind full of all the soupy longings that every high-school girl was awash in ... underneath it, all you longed to be was annihilated by love, to be swept off your feet, to be filled up by a giant prick spouting sperm, soapsuds, silk and satins and, of course, money. — Erica Jong

Sometimes, as Eve was born from one of Adam's ribs, a woman was born during my sleep from a cramped position of my thigh. Formed from the pleasure I was on the point of enjoying, she, I imagined, was the one offering it to me. My body, which felt in hers my own warmth, would try to find itself inside her, I would wake up. The rest of humanity seemed very remote compared to this woman I had left scarcely a few moments before; my cheek was still warm from her kiss, my body aching from the weight of hers. If, as sometimes happens, she had the features of a woman I had known in life, I would devote myself entirely to this end: to finding her again, like those who go off on a journey to see a longed-for city with their own eyes and imagine that one can enjoy in reality the charm of a dream. Little by little, the memory of her would fade, I had forgotten the girl of my dream. — Marcel Proust

I walk and walk with cold hands.
Back at the house it is filled with longing,
nothing to carry longing away.
I look back over my life.
I try to find analogies.
There are none.
I have longed for people before, I have loved people before.
Not like this.
It was not this. — Anne Carson

I longed for the pitter-patter of little feet, so I got a dog. It's cheaper, and you get more feet. — Garrison Keillor

Three things I have longed to see ... The sea serpent, a white rhinoceros, and an unselfish man. — Myrtle Reed

I always wanted to grow up fast. I longed for more than the Mississippi Delta could give. — Charley Pride

I had been seasoned by adversity, and tutored by experience, and I longed to redeem my lost honour in the eyes of those whose opinion was more than that of all the world to me. — Anne Bronte

You must do whatever you think is best. But I know one thing. Nothing meant more to Graystripe than your friendship and his Clan. Even when he was in RiverClan, he longed to go home. He would want to see ThunderClan as strong as it could possibly be, even if that meant accepting that he's not coming back. — Erin Hunter

Goodnight, Sam."
Sam took a deep breath and tried to settle himself. It did not good, instead he inhaled a hint of her vanilla perfume mixed with the smell of sea salt. He couldn't help himself. His mind drifted. He longed to buy his face in her neck and breathe it in. Instead he made due with taking deep breathes as the spicy aroma engulfed him.
After a while he realized this wasn't working for him, her signature scent stimulated him and forced him to long for her. He tried counting backwards from a hundred. Maybe that would work to level off his arousal so he could get some sleep. Just lying there thinking about her cologne or the fact that he could simply reach out and touch her body was enough to keep him hard all night. And frustrated...ninety-five, ninety-four, ninety-three. — Carolyn Gibbs

The Lord, before His Incarnation, let mankind experience all the bitterness of sin, all their powerlessness to eradicate it; and when all longed for a Deliverer, then He appeared, the most wise, all-powerful Physician and Helper. When men hungered and thirsted after righteousness, as it grew weaker, then the everlasting righteousness came. — John Of Kronstadt

She wished he could make her somehow indelibly his; that they were still children so they could cut their fingers and mingle their blood and know this meant something. She longed for some transformation more lasting than that wrought by the law and his name, some visceral change he might effect in her so that anyone on the street with one glance would know she was his. — Meredith Duran

I am a child of the Milky Way. The night is my mother. I am made of the dust of stars. Every atom in my body was forged in a star. When the universe exploded into being, already the bird longed for the wood and the fish for the pool. When the first galaxies fell into luminous clumps, already matter was struggling toward consciousness. The star clouds of Sagittarius are a burning bush. If there is a voice in Sagittarius, I'd be a fool not to listen. If God's voice in the night is a scrawny cry, then I'll prick up my ears. If night's faint lights fail to knock me off my feet, then I'll sit back on a dark hillside and wait and watch. A hint here and a trait there. Listening and watching. Waiting, always waiting, for the tingle in the spine. — Chet Raymo

August briefly tried that on for size. Wondered if he longed for summer because summer made it so much easier to breathe. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

And suddenly, she longed for a thunderstorm. — Natalie Babbitt

She stared at the faded tile floor before her feet, but knew his every step around her small kitchen. When Martin touched the coffee cup patterned curtains he must assume she'd made, her fingers throbbed. When his eyes slid across the flowery aluminum water bottle at the table, her throat cracked with thirst.
The radio clicked off.
The silence of the room soaked up her raspy breaths, her pounding heart, her ache, and stirred them around the one man she ever longed for in a way that changes how you taste the world.
Her desire swirled in a pulsing, betraying, blurry hook, and encouraged him to move closer.
Martin obeyed. — Kim Bongiorno

No sooner would such a temptation present itself than I would smother it. The effect was of snuffing out a candle, two candles, a row of twenty, until the lens pulled back to reveal an entire votive stand exhaling a hundred thin lines of smoke as a terraced offering before the shrine. In this religion hidden lights had been declared superior to those that glared. Somewhere I was storing up merit, accumulating the credit I'd need to buy, one day, the salvation I longed for. Until then (and it was a reckoning that could be forestalled indefinitely, that I preferred putting off) I'd live in that happiest of all conditions: the long but seemingly prosperous courtship. It was a series of tests, ever more arduous, even perverse. For instance, I was required to deny my love in order to prove it. — Edmund White

I remembered riding in the barge with Queen Katherine and how everyone had pulled off their hats as we went by and the women curtsied, and the children kissed their hands and waved. There had been a trust that the king was wise and strong and that the queen was beautiful and good and that nothing could go wrong. But Anne and the Boleyn ambition had opened a great crack in that unity and now everyone could see into the void. They could see now that the king was no better than some paltry little mayor of a fat little town, who wanted nothing more than to feather his own nest, and that he was married to a woman who knew desire, ambition and greed and longed for satisfaction. If — Philippa Gregory

I watched the colored lights and sparkles coming off of Sebastian in the dark water, as the ocean began the process of rebuilding his tail. I longed to join him in the water, to wrap my arms around him and let him carry me under the sea; but I wasn't ready. For him, the ocean was a home; for me it was death. Without being able to transform, the ocean depths would suffocate me, the pressure collapse my bones and flesh. — D.S. Murphy

Then a soft air, a simple melody, rose to the ears of the suddenly hushed court; and for me, it was May Day again, and I was no longer cold, for the sun burned bright and the grass smelled of its sour-sweet bruisings and an old man fashioned a ballad for the Nut-Brown maid, who would ever be true to her lover. I leaned towards the brightness and, in an abandonment of joy and because there was none to see, tore off my henin and let my nut-brown hair fall to my knees. For I would be a child again, for five minutes, and remember the time when men stopped to gaze at me, with my chaplet of flowers crowning that at which they all marvelled, and longed to touch and stroke and possess. — Rosemary Hawley Jarman

At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow. — Gustave Flaubert

If you came back, you wanted to leave again; if you went away, you longed to come back. Wherever you were, you could hear the call of the homeland, like the note of the herdsman's horn far away in the hills. You had one home out there and one over here, and yet you were an alien in both places. Your true abiding place was the vision of something very far off, and your soul was like the waves, always restless, forever in motion. — Johan Bojer

What did this portend? He still breathed, the instruments did not change, his heart beat on. But he called to Peter. Did this mean that he longed to live the life of his child of the mind, Young Peter? Or in some kind of delirium was he speaking to his brother the Hegemon? Or earlier, his brother as a boy. Peter, wait for me. Peter, did I do well? Peter, don't hurt me. Peter, I hate you. Peter for one smile of yours I'd die or kill. What was his message? — Orson Scott Card

His finger pressed my lips to silence me. "So, tell me, my beautiful, little demon, how does it feel? Did you enjoy seducing Caleb to get what you wanted? Or were you so enraptured by the green of his eyes that you longed for his tongue in your mouth and his hands on your body?" I gasped, but he went on before I could respond. "Truthfully, I'd prefer the former, because it would mean since he's bailed on the deal, I'm the only one left to help you. I must warn you, however, it's going to take a whole lot of seduction to get me to help you now. — L.J. Kentowski

Why don't people take the trouble to let you know that they are alive? It is so much more important. The whole system is wrong. No sooner do I die, than all the flowers I have ever longed for in life pour in. — Elizabeth Bibesco

In our youths, many of us suspected that being tied down to a partner and family might constrain us. But after 40, even that landscape starts to shift. Many singletons turn inward and start longing for the things so many of us longed to be free of in our 20s. — Sandra Tsing Loh

I have longed to move away
From the hissing of the spent lie
And the old terrors' continual cry
Growing more terrible as the day
Goes over the hill into the deep sea;
I have longed to move away
From the repetition of salutes,
For there are ghosts in the air
And ghostly echoes on paper,
And the thunder of calls and notes.
I have longed to move away but am afraid;
Some life, yet unspent, might explode
Out of the old lie burning on the ground,
And, crackling into the air, leave me half-blind.
Neither by night's ancient fear,
The parting of hat from hair,
Pursed lips at the receiver,
Shall I fall to death's feather.
By these I would not care to die,
Half convention and half lie. — Dylan Thomas

I longed to be wrapped in his arms again, pour my troubles, make everything feel okay, even if it wasn't — Katie Alender

Yet early on in the marriage I found myself
despite all my self-promises
drifting into the role of wife: focusing on the renovations of the apartment, doing silly little domestic things instead of writing, using the wife role as cop-out from my work, my work which had always involved me in so much controversy and which some part of me longed to retreat from ... Even when I was forty-seven, full of my own power, my own identity, something in me wanted to escape from the fray and dwindle into a wife. It seemed to comfy, so safe. — Erica Jong

In my experience, there never seems to be a man or woman who will walk in and literally sweep you off your feet, or away, when you're in the biggest distaster of your life. If it happens, it'll be guaranteed he or she won't be the one you've longed for. Yeah ... we all still seem to be waiting for Mr. or Ms. Right. — Jennifer Salaiz

To embrace the message of Christmas is to throw off my hedonistic rebellion and bow before the chafing reality that I can't save myself, and in that very act to be suddenly taken aback in that I've stumbled upon the very freedom I've longed for in the very place I'd least expected it. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Passing the kitchen the second time, the vodka sang to him from the freezer its sweet song of forgetfulness. He longed to dart in there and free it from its prison, to twist the cap off with a practiced flick of his thumb and tip his head back, filling his mouth with the only thing that could quell the fear that roiled his stomach. Mullins clapped one hand on his shoulder, perhaps sensing something. The goddamn man was on him like a tick. — Fred Anderson

Part of her wanted to comfort him, to tell him everything was going to be okay. But the rest of her just wanted to throw him to the ground and rip those jeans off him. Funny how she could be so jealous of a pair of pants. They covered the sinfully male body she longed to explore. — Rosalie Lario

I felt that I did not really remember her except through the pain, and I longed for the nails that riveted her to my consciousness to be driven yet deeper. — Marcel Proust

She smiled and shook her head before turning to walk off. As she strutted away from me, my eyes dropped down to her pert little derriere. A little groan escaped my lips. The back view was just as good as the front. She grabbed her purse from the side, and I silently congratulated God for creating something so f**king breathtaking. I'd never longed for anything more in my life. She was beautiful. — Kirsty Moseley

She squeezed her eyes closed. She heard the buggy stop, heard Colin's boots hit the ground, knew that he strode toward her side of the wagon. "Felicia, where do you think you're going?" "Away," she whispered. Strong hands closed around her waist, and suddenly she was airborne, lifted off the wagon seat and then set gently on the ground. Her eyes flew open. "You're not going anywhere, Miss Kristoffersen. Not until I've done this." His lips claimed hers in the kiss she'd longed for, even when she hadn't known it. The kiss was gentle, yet it sent her senses reeling. She felt turned upside down and wrong side out. His arms gathered her closer, and she felt their hearts beating as one. Oh, if they could only stay like this forever. — Robin Lee Hatcher

When I touched my hand against the Western Wall and placed my prayer between its ancient stones, I thought of all the centuries that the children of Israel had longed to return to their ancient homeland. When I went to Sderot and saw the daily struggle to survive in the eyes of an eight-year-old boy who lost his leg to a Hamas rocket, and when I walked among the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem, I was reminded of the existential fear of Israelis when a modern dictator seeks nuclear weapons and threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the map - face of the Earth. — Barack Obama

That's enough. You can stop now: the phrase Sedgwick said she longed to hear whenever she was suffering. (Enough hurting, enough showing off, enough achieving, enough talking, enough trying, enough writing, enough living.) — Maggie Nelson

When a third wave of poverty overwhelmed me, I knew with even greater certitude than when I had lived in Clerkenwell that the only complete solution to my problem was suicide. I never brought it off. I was afraid. A lifetime of never making positive decisions, accepting instead the lesser of the evils presented to me, had atrophied my will. It was not so much that I longed for death as that I didn't long for life. Emptiness, though, was not a sufficiently definite feeling to lead to a violent act. Instead of sitting in my room and balancing the relative convenience of various ways of ending it all, I ought to have been busy trying to summon up a reasonable amount of despair. Hopelessness was thinly spread like drizzle over my whole outlook. But, in an emergency, I could not find a puddle of despondency deep enough to drown in. — Quentin Crisp

For the next nine months, Sylvia would report on campus trends, politics, tastes, style. It was an honor, but it was grueling. Sylvia was overworked. She had boyfriend problems. She longed for Europe. She broke her leg in a skiing accident. Her best friend, Marcia Brown, had gotten engaged and moved off campus - other girls were away on their junior year abroad. The whole campus seemed mired in some bleak haze- there were suicide attempts, abortions, disappearances, and hasty marriages. Sylvia coped with shopping binges in downtown Northhampton- sheer blouses, French pumps, red cashmere sweaters, white skirts, and tight black pullovers - clothes more suited to voguish amusements than studying. Everyone wanted to be one of Mademoiselle's guest editors, but Sylvia needed it - some shot of glamour to pull her out of the mud. — Elizabeth Winder

In a sea of strangers,
you've longed to know me.
Your life spent sailing
to my shores. — Lang Leav

There were simply some guys you wanted to hold on to - every memory, every note, every conversation - you longed to keep it all. And that was how I felt when it came to him. — J. Sterling

In the darkness of a thousand
withered souls, it was Er Lang's hand that I
sought, and his voice that I longed to hear. Perhaps
it is selfish of me, but an uncertain future
with him, in all its laughter and quarrels, is better
than being left behind. — Yangsze Choo

Many nights, I longed for home. But it occurred to me as I struggled for a feeling of comfort and safety: I have no idea where home is. — Liz Murray

My beloved has arrived, but rather than greeting him,
All I can do is bite the corner of my apron with a blank expression-
What an awkward woman am I.
My heart has longed for him as hugely and openly as a full moon
But instead I narrow my eyes, and my glance to him
Is sharp and narrow as the crescent moon.
But then, I'm not the only one who behaves this way.
My mother and my mother's mother were as silly and stumbling as I am when they were girls ...
Still, the love from my heart is overflowing,
As bright and crimson as the heated metal in a blacksmith's forge. — Kim Dong Hwa

Against the odds, the Beast had shown her true beauty. He had shown her it was okay to feel lost and made her realize how desperately she had wanted to be found. She had learned that things were not always what they seemed, that people could surprise you. He had given her the one thing she had always longed for - something more. — Elizabeth Rudnick

All I know is that I am walking on a bridge. Amidst the mist the point where it started appears faded and the bridge ends in bright light that makes it too hard to even look. I need to cross this and I am walking. But, my Lord, I am tired!

I love this blue; I wish if I could see the depth of the river beneath, come back to the surface, float and then to be carried away by the tranquil waves to the banks where a thousand lilies will bloom, look at the sun and say 'we love you'.

O Lord, remember, they are my eyes that longed for a life the boon of your sight! — Preeth Nambiar

They fathomed principle; they attached themselves to right. They longed for the absolute, they caught glimpses of the infinite realisations; the absolute, by its very rigidity, pushes the mind towards the boundless, makes it float in the illimitable. There is nothing like dream to create the future. Utopia today, flesh and blood tomorrow. — Victor Hugo

It struck me again the ways Angelo and I were like them. Angelo was my angel, and I was ever on the ground, looking up at him. It was no wonder Jon and I hadn't been able to make things work
we'd both longed for something grander. And it was no wonder Cole and Angelo had been drawn to each other, and yet, they had only brushed wings in the night, neither one of them able to stop in their flight. — Marie Sexton

I was angry at myself for my inclination to vice. I longed for the day when a state of frenzy would lead my mind to sober pasture, just as it had for Saint Augustine. I longed for the day when the love of one woman would be sacred enough to forget all the rest. — Roman Payne

Jubal longed for the days when a lawyer could cite the Bill of Rights and not have some over-riding Federation trickery defeat him. — Robert A. Heinlein

I longed to be a flowering branch,
the sea in its rocking, an unguessed world.
Even now it seems so much as if the body was only
the desire of the planet,
as if it could turn itself into the universe
both together, the same, — Linda Hogan

And as for the vague something
was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression?
that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver, and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare
to divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature. — Charlotte Bronte

The death of Jesus was the opening and the emptying of the full heart of God; it was the outgushing of that ocean of infinite mercy that heaved and panted and longed for an outlet; it was God showing how he could love a poor, guilty sinner. — Octavius Winslow

Sleep, with her tender balm, her touch so kind, Has passed me by; Afar I see her vesture, velvet-lined, Float silently; O! Sleep, my tired eyes had need of thee! Is thy sweet kiss not meant to-night for me? Peace, with the blessings that I longed for so, Has passed me by; Where'er she folds her holy wings I know All tempests die; O! Peace, my tired soul had need of thee! — E. Pauline Johnson

Like the tender fire of stars moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke upon and illumined his memory. He longed to recall to her those moments, to make her forget the years of their dull existence together and remember only their moments of ecstasy. — James Joyce

Information helps you to see that you're not alone. That there's somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept, who've all longed and lost, who've all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you're not really any different from everyone else. — Maya Angelou

Her mind circled Georgia, circled Ebenezer. It called up images and memories and things nearly home but never that final destination itself, as if it existed at the center of her mind, shining like a sun too radiant. She knew there was a face at the center of that radiance. A face too bright. A face she sought and longed for but could no longer bear the light of. She drifted into sleep, circling, circling, circling. — A.S. Peterson

The two Anastasias represent the two faces of the twentieth century. One is a century that really existed, full of war and the slaughter of innocents. The second is the century we longed to have, of peace and family pleasures, and the dreams of any little girl who would close her eyes and become a princess. — John Klier

Because as a youngster I longed to see the Black man free and I longed to see anyone stand up for us. — Louis Farrakhan

We longed for healing and happiness - as if happiness is a state of being. But it's not. Happiness is a vector. It's movement. — Neal Shusterman

He tastes and feels even better than I ever dreamed he would. It's like waiting years and years for the present you have always wanted, longed for, then unwrapping it and finding it's so much more than you ever imagined it could be. — Samantha Towle

We know how we will die - with cousins in double murder suicides, in wars that are mere theory to you, convalescing in hospitals, slowly choked out by angina and cholesterol. We are the walking lowest rung, and all that stands between us and beast, between us and the local zoo, is respect, the respect you take as natural as sugar and shit. We know what we are, that we walk like we are not long for this world, that this world has never longed for us. I — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I've retrained myself since childhood into a kind of diligent goodwill toward life. Life and I became friends some years ago - not the sort of exciting friendship I longed for as a child, but a kindly truce, a pleasure in coming home — Elizabeth Kostova

Elizabeth's tears had wrung my heart: I longed to enfold her in my arms, to comfort her, but I knew
it would be infamous indeed to take such advantage of her distress. — Mary Street

She was emotionally retarded having no sense of humour, cold and no people skills. She was like her mother was obsessed by appearances and wealth and longed to get married to escape from home. — Annette J. Dunlea

Germans longed to be near shit, but not in it. This, as it turns out, is an excellent description of their role in the current financial crisis. — Michael Lewis

It is strange,' he said at last. 'I had longed to enter the world of men. Now I see it filled with sorrow, with cruelty and treachery, with those who would destroy all around them.'
'Yet, enter it you must,' Gwydion answered, 'for it is a destiny laid on each of us. True, you have seen these things. But there are equal parts of love and joy. — Lloyd Alexander

The daughter who transports him out of the longed-for American pastoral and into everything that is its antithesis and its enemy, into the fury, the violence, and the desperation of the counterpastoral - into the indigenous American berserk. — Philip Roth

She struggled. She became uncomfortable. She longed for more freedom and began to sense that the world she inhabited was not where she ultimately belonged. She did not know what was on the other side of her struggle, but she was getting ready to experience something new and wonderful that in her wildest imaginings could not be described. Darrel ... she was getting ready to breathe. "And when she finally drew that first breath, it was clean and fresh and like nothing she had ever felt. She took another breath and another - and all around her, loved ones and friends cheered in a joyous celebration of her arrival." Jones looked closely at the woman's face. "Look at her now, Darrel," he said. "For many years this dear child was happy and content in — Andy Andrews

Authors I've longed to write like - but realize I actually can't even begin to - include Poe, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kafka, Daniil Kharms, Witold Gombrowicz, Emily Dickinson, Robert Walser, Barbara Comyns, Ntozake Shange, Camille Laurens, Zbigniew Herbert, and Jose Saramago. — Helen Oyeyemi

He longed for sleep, but it would not immerse him; that night the waters he sought for his repose were deep enough to wade in, but not to swim. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Looking at this house made me crushingly aware that most of my life I'd lived behind the shadow of who my father wished me to be. And all I'd ever longed for was to stand in the sunshine of being loved for who I was. — Mia Sheridan