Longing for something that you once had is a mistake because the pictures in your mind are never the same as whatever it is you are longing for.
—Jane Urquhart in Changing Heaven
All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.
—Andre Breton
Maybe love was superstition, a prayer we said to keep the truth of loneliness at bay. I tilted my head back. The stars looked like they were close together, when really they were millions of miles apart. In the end, maybe love just meant longing for something impossibly bright and forever out of reach.
—Leigh Bardugo in Ruin and Rising
There are people in our lives whom we love, and lose, and unfailingly long for. They orbit our hearts like Halley's Comet, crossing into our universe only once, or if we are lucky, twice in a lifetime.
—Jamie Ford in The World As We Know It
Just as the water of the streams we see is small in amount compared to that which flows underground, so the idealism which becomes visible is small in amount compared with what men and women bear locked in their hearts.… To unbind what is bound, to bring the underground waters to the surface: mankind is waiting and longing for such as can do that.
—Albert Schweitzer