longing

That year, when the trees burned the fire of late summer into their leaves and the ground mist was a ghost of the river, long and wet and cold, the aunt looked from her windows to the walls around her and imagined another winter inside them. She began to see the world as a bird sees bars, and she scratched her arms beneath her sleeves.

And, at such a time, for a few of us there will always be a tugging at the heart__nowing a precious moment had gone and we not there. We can ask and ask but we can__ have again what once seemed ours for ever__he way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on belfry floor, a remembered voice, a loved face. They__e gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.

I didn't have that kind of friendship, the forever kind of friendship that will last your whole life through, no matter what.

My lips have touched more bottles than lovers and I'm half a shot away from psychotic.

I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string. I am restless. Restless and useless. I, too, create corpses.

I sleep and sleep and sleep, yet I still have an unquenchable thirst for it.

I wanted a heaven. And I grew up striving for that world-- an eternal world- that would wash away my temporary misery.

How strange and ironic it is- all the words i long to sayare lost in words.

The great systems that inform the world about the truth and life invariably claim to be absolutely truthful and well-balanced. In reality they are quaking bridges built out of yearning.

She made him yearn for a future his kind could never have, and a connection he sure as hell didn__ deserve.

I go backwards and forwards, recapturing the past, wondering about the future__nd, most unreasonably, I find myself longing for the past more than for the future.

I would fight every angel between us until God said, "Yes.

..and when he let her go, it was as if she had been filled and didn't realize it until he pulled away and the absence rushed back in.

What men classify as living is often but the discontentment of making oneself itch just to enjoy the scratch.

Year after year of dirty snow and bitter winds_ houses and whole districts of people who aren__ really unhappy, but worse, who are neither happy nor unhappy; people who are ugly because they__e neither ugly nor beautiful; creatures that are dismally neutral, who long without longings as though they__e unconscious, unconsciously suffering from being alive.

Let not our longing slay the appetite of our living.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them.

Who am I? They often tell me I would step from my cell's confinement calmly, cheerfully, firmly, like a squire from his country-house.Who am I? They often tell me I would talk to my warden freely and friendly and clearly, as though it were mine to command.Who am I? They also tell me I would bear the days of misfortune equably, smilingly, proudly, like one accustomed to win.Am I then really all that which other men tell of, or am I only what I know of myself, restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage, struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat, yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds, thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness, trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation, tossing in expectation of great events, powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance, weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making, faint and ready to say farewell to it all.Who am I? This or the other? Am I one person today, and tomorrow another? Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others, and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling? Or is something within me still like a beaten army, fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!