Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning —
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby
All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.
—Andre Breton
All writing, even the clumsy kind, exposes in its loops and slants a yearning deeper than an intention, the soul of the writer flopping on the clothes-peg of his exclamation mark.
—Paul Theroux
Justice is like the kingdom of God — it is not without us as a fact; it is within us as a great yearning.
—George Eliot
The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular one and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.
—Iris Murdoch
Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.
—Louise Erdrich in The Painted Drum