Pining Quotes

She is focused on living her own full life, following her own agenda and cultivating her actual self, rather than reinventing herself or pining away to be someone she's not. ~ Debra Ollivier

Ree is his. Is his, is devoted to him, is aggravatingly tender and possessively passionate and wrapped up in him in a thousand ways, loves him in a way that is very useful. It seems a law of nature, at this point. Even if the events of this startling evening have served to give him pause, a little. But Ree is still his. He's fairly sure. Such complex knots can't be untied so quickly, can they?

Still, it's not the only thing disturbing him, about the Dam's account of early events. She laughs when she sees his face, his sidewise look at her description, and there's definitely a mean note to it. "Oh, it was darling," she says, and he gets the feeling of a caged animal stuck behind bars, while a cruel child pokes at it. "You were enchanted by his wolf, would follow it anywhere, welcome or not, though mostly he tolerated it. But you couldn't manage his name – and a nickname hadn't stuck at that point – so instead you imitated the sound he made. Rather insultingly, too, if not intentionally – Ruff. Or Woof, or whatever it was that you intended to say, except that it actually came out as Wuff. Or Wuffy, depending, and at varying pitches and volume as you ran after him, falling down and rolling about half the time."

Penn is transfixed. It's outrageous, it's an outrage. It can't possibly be true. It was nothing like that. ~ Alex Ankarr

I loved the idea of Travolta sitting on the kid's swing, pining away for his girlfriend. ~ Randal Kleiser

Silences of my days
Silences of my wanderings
Silences of my nights
Silences of my loneliness

Silences of my work
Silences of my insanity
Silences of my dreams
Silences of my craziness


Silences of my passions
Silences of my reading
Silences of my obsessions
Silences of my writing


Silences of my thoughts
Silences of my pondering
Silences of my emotions
Silences of my aching

Silences of my stares
Silences of my pining
Silences of my feelings
Silences of my longing

Silences where I truly live
My Silences
Leave me to my silences... ~ Avijeet Das

Clamorous pauperism feastest
While honest Labor, pining, hideth his sharp ribs. ~ Martin Farquhar Tupper

Never has a gift for pining," Nikolai said. "Though I do like to show off my profile by staring mournfully out of windows. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Did you fuck her?" Anger flashed in Reggie eyes. "Which answer do you want to hear the most?" He sidled close enough for Is to feel the coolness coming from the water still on his skin. "Yes means I'm done pining for you. No says I'm still waiting even though I know it's never gonna happen." He grabbed Is by the jaw, fingers tight, biting. "Which one cuts deepest, Is? ~ Avril Ashton

Nah, mostly they're just students. Bit of weed, bit of booze, bit of studying, bit of pining away in their rooms wondering why nobody wants to shag them. ~ Stuart MacBride

Poem from Rev. Jim Cotter, as listed on the opening pages of "Anatomy of the Spirit" by Caroline Myss:

~ God be in my head and in my understanding.

God be in my eyes and in my looking.

God be in my mouth and in my speaking.

God be in my tongue and in my tasting.

God be in my lips and in my greeting.

~ God be in my nose and in my smelling/inhaling.

God be in my ears and in my hearing.

God be in my neck and in my humbling.

God be in my shoulders and in my bearing.

God be in my back and in my standing.

~ God be in my arms and in my reaching/receiving.

God be in my hands and in my working.

God be in my legs and in my walking.

God be in my feet and in my grounding.

God be in my knees and in my relating.

~ God be in my gut and in my feeling.

God be in my bowels and in my forgiving.

God be in my loins and in my swiving.

God be in my lungs and in my breathing.

God be in my heart and in my loving.

~ God be in my skin and in my touching.

God be in my flesh and in my paining/pining.

God be in my blood and in my living.

God be in my bones and in my dying.

God be at my end and at my reviving. ~ Caroline Myss

Before coming to the Black Wood, I had read as widely in tree lore as possible. As well as the many accounts I encountered of damage to trees and woodland -- of what in German is called Waldsterben, or 'forest-death' -- I also met with and noted down stories of astonishment at woods and trees. Stories of how Chinese woodsmen in the T'ang and S'ung dynasties -- in obedience to the Taoist philosophy of a continuity of nature between humans and other species -- would bow to the trees which they felled, and offer a promise that the tree would be used well, in buildings that would dignify the wood once it had become timber. The story of Xerxes, the Persian king who so loved sycamores that, when marching to war with the Greeks, he halted his army of many thousands of men in order that they might contemplate and admire one outstanding specimen. Thoreau's story of how he felt so attached to the trees in the woods around his home-town of Concord, Massachusetts, that he would call regularly on them, gladly tramping 'eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or yellow-birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.

When Willa Cather moved to the prairies of Nebraska, she missed the wooded hills of her native Virginia. Pining for trees, she would sometimes travel south 'to our German neighbors, to admire their catalpa grove, or to see the big elm tree that grew out of a crack in the earth. Trees were so rare in that country that we us ~ Robert Macfarlane

I can't spend any more time pining after someone who doesn't belong to me. ~ Michelle Krys

Life is a gift from the Creator, meant to be savored and enjoyed, not spent pining over things that could never be. ~ Julie Lessman

I can't keep doing this to myself, getting my hopes up so high, only to have them come crashing down. I can't keep waiting for him to come to his senses, having my whole emotional state rest on what he decides. What if he never wakes up to how perfect we'd be together? What if I spend another year pining for him - or longer even? In a terrible flash, I see my future stretching out before me: waiting for his calls, rearranging my life around college visits, and decoding texts and instant messages like they could be something real, something true.
This isn't love; this is pure torment. ~ Abby McDonald

Long have I dwelt forgotten here
In pining woe and dull despair;
This place of solitude and gloom
Must be my dungeon and my tomb. ~ Anne Bronte

Nearing eight months since he'd seen her, and now she was engaged.

Damn.

It was the wakeup call Butcher needed. That was for damn sure.

Forget the burning in his soul.

It was time to purge Roux Tucker from his mind.

He'd been a pathetic, pining little bitch for too long.

She was someone else's problem now. ~ V. Theia

No one, she thought, had ever understood the nature of love…how love went beyond flutters in the heart, pining and yearning, or even beyond hatred and loathing. Love runs blood deep; permanent, inescapable. ~ Tabitha Vohn

The only people who seem to believe in the phenomenon of men and women just being good friends all seem to have good friends who are pining miserably after them, waiting for them to break up with their significant others. ~ Tim Kreider

I'm not some tortured, abandoned creature, Wayne," Marasi said, finding herself smiling at her distorted reflection in a ladle. "I'm not sitting around pining and dreaming for someone else to decide if I should be happy. There's nothing there. Whether that's due to actual lack of affection on his part, or more to stubbornness, I don't care. I've moved on. ~ Brandon Sanderson

There is a social contract between the readers/buyers of romance novels and the novelists who write them. It's this: the girl ends up with the guy about whom and for which legions of fans have been pining. It's the reason we pick up romance novels in the first place. We want to read about a coupling so intense, it speaks to a deep place inside of us, an atavistic need to be consumed by lust, passion and love. That is the social contract. ~ Allison

The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. ~ William James

But while you're sitting around pining and waiting and wondering and hoping that this perfect love happens, lots of guys and lots of dates and lots of kisses are passing you by. ~ Lauren Morrill

I am back in my beloved city. The scene of desolation fills my eyes with tears. At every step my distress and agitation increases. I cannot recognize houses or landmarks I once knew well. Of the former inhabitants, there is no trace. Everywhere there is a terrible emptiness. All at once I find myself in the quarter where I once resided. I recall the life I used to live: meeting friends in the evening, reciting poetry, making love, spending sleepless nights pining for beautiful women and writing verses on their long tresses which held me captive. That was life! What is there left of it? Nothing. ~ Khushwant Singh

Having already funneled its students to their respective classrooms, the school's front hall was empty, its glass showcase in the same neglected spot outside the front office. ... She looked at it briefly, her eyes sweeping over the faces of students whose adult trajectories would lead them either to gloss over these moments or to spend their lives pining for their return. ~ Myla Goldberg

Is this what all you refined gentlemen are like - wishing and pining and never acting? ~ Osamu Dazai

In all things, the beginning and end are the most engaging. Does the love of man and woman suggest only their embraces? No, the sorrow of lovers parted before they met, laments over promises betrayed, long lonely nights spent sleepless until dawn, pining thoughts for one in some far place, a woman left sighing over past love in her tumbledown abode - it is these, surely, that embody the romance of love. ~ Yoshida Kenko

I wonder: instead of retreating and hiding, instead of pining for the way it was, what if I accept the way it is? This strikes me as both the most obvious thing in the world and the most profound. ~ Ann Kidd Taylor

She broke my heart over and over, day after day, but I love her. ~ Kelly Moran

We may live without poetry, music, and art;
We may live without conscience, and live without heart;
We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man cannot live without cooks.
He may live without books, - what is knowledge but grieving?
He may live without hope, - what is hope but deceiving?
He may live without love, - what is passion but pining?
But where is the man that can live without dining? ~ Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton

Call me names, dearest! Call me thy bird
That flies to thy breast at one cherishing word,
That folds its wild wings there, ne'er dreaming of flight,
That tenderly sings there in loving delight!
Oh! my sad heart keeps pining for one fond word,
Call me pet names, dearest! Call me thy bird! ~ Frances Sargent Osgood

In an age where the lowered eyelid is just a sign of fatigue, the delicate game of love is pining away. Freud and flirtation are poor companions. ~ Marya Mannes

I have something I need to get off my chest."
"What's that?"
"This." He closed his mouth over hers. ~ Kelly Moran

Gustavo Tiberius speaking."

"It's so weird you do that, man," Casey said, sounding amused. "Every time I call."

"It's polite," Gus said. "Just because you kids these days don't have proper phone etiquette."

"Oh boy, there's the Grumpy Gus I know. You miss me?"

Gus was well aware the others could hear the conversation loud and clear. He was also aware he had a reputation to maintain. "Hadn't really thought about it."

"Really."

"Yes."

"Gus."

"Casey."

"I miss you."

"I miss you too," Gus mumbled into the phone, blushing fiercely.

"Yeah? How much?"

Gus was in hell. "A lot," he said truthfully. "There have been allegations made against my person of pining and moping. False allegations, mind you, but allegations nonetheless."

"I know what you mean," Casey said. "The guys were saying the same thing about me."

Gus smiled. "How embarrassing for you."
"Completely. You have no idea."
"They're going to get you packed up this week?"
"Ah, yeah. Sure. Something like that."
"Casey."
"Yes, Gustavo."
"You're being cagey."
"I have no idea what you mean. Hey, that's a nice Hawaiian shirt you've got on. Pink? I don't think I've seen you in that color before."

Gus shrugged. "Pastor Tommy had a shitload of them. I think I could wear one every day for the rest of the year and not re ~ T.J. Klune

She seemed to still be completely unaware that Elliot was pining openly for her and messing up customers' orders as a result. And the one time I'd tried to hint to her that there might be dating prospects with someone she already knew, someone she was friends with, she'd thought I was trying to set her up with Warren, and things had briefly gotten very uncomfortable. ~ Morgan Matson

Call it professional interest. You see, Jessamine, love is a kind of poison; one of my favorite kinds, in fact. It infects the blood; it takes over the mind; it seizes dominion over the body. It amuses me to think of him pining for you. Aching for what he cannot have. The loneliness in his soul is festering like a wound. There is nothing I could do for him that is worse that what you have already done, my lovely. And I assure you, in his case there will be no cure. ~ Maryrose Wood

If I missed my moment, I missed my moment. I mean, I wasn't pining to be president of the United States. ~ Chris Christie

I imagine you not telling me to whisper. I imagine you not saying oh don't say this literally. You want me to evoke as opposed to mere describing. You want me to be an invisible scribe that an octoepoose was hiding. I'm not sure if my facial features are an autograph that your Picasso smile is signing. Infamous for the mirror I shook when my sock puppets were pining? I am not just a fish that you gave wings to! I don't simply flop in the air whenever you brush some mannequinn's hair. There is a reason for the bad timing. Exquisite imbalances. A child enjoying the pink sky. I won't say that is my clue! Playing The Beatles on a kazoo is beautiful oooh ooooh
Your laughter is a woman with alot of eyeballs on her stomach that pretends that she doesn't see the colors of all them songs. In the pre dawn hours we dance with delusions and illusions. The eternal seamstress does not care for Frakenstein's dress(she still loves our unique caress ) She loves and laughs despite some so-called scientist. Where is that emperor and his nakedness! Darling, our atoms need never split. We compliment in so many ways that all our night's and days have become one swirling sunrise/sunset that only true lovers can scoff at(those who shhhhh) The flower is not passive or apologetic. It blooms through the fractured net. Floating magnetic(eep eeep)
You are not just some seductress. You are the leader of an elite group of intergalactic seductress impersonators who reveal corruption but then ch ~ Junipurr- Sometimes Trudy

Any role that's proactive is a great role, and action roles are by their very nature proactive. You get to do stuff. I hate sitting in a corner - I'd much prefer an action role in a popcorn movie rather than pining in a corner not doing anything. ~ Helen Mirren

People like music when they're in love, but they don't need it as much. You need music when you're missing someone or you're pining for someone or you're forgetting someone or you're trying to process what just happened. ~ Taylor Swift

I am not a huge fan of the one-sided pining romances where the guy is a perfect love-object because we don't see inside his head. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

How does modern science relate to religion? It seems that people have already said a million times everything there is to say about this question. Yet in practice, science and religion are like a husband and wife who after 500 years of marriage counselling still don't know each other. He still dreams about Cinderella and she keeps pining for Prince Charming, while they argue about whose turn it is to take out the rubbish. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

I usually bring a point and shoot with me so I can go out on the weekends and shoot a bit. I used to bring more cameras, but I'm also an Ebay nut so sometimes I'll order something if I'm really pining for it when I'm on location. ~ Anton Yelchin

Have you ever found your heart's desire and then lost it? I had seen myself, a portrait of myself as a reader. My childhood: days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew, forbidden books read secretively late at night. Teenage years reading -trying to read- books I'd heard were important, Naked Lunch, and The Fountainhead, Ulysses and Women in Love ... It was as though I had dreamt the perfect lover, who vanished as I woke, leaving me pining and surly. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

The life we live isn't growing but fleeing
from us leaves us empty / pining ~ Nate Pritts

Be careful, Alexandra, you're beginning to sound like the type of young lady who wants all those things typical young females want," Ella said with warning in her voice, her nose wrinkled, "marriage, children, a house in Surrey." "What's wrong with wanting marriage and children?" Vivi asked. "I want those things. Not Surrey," she said with a raised finger, "but the rest." "True, but with you, it's different. You're pining after The One." Ella said the last with an exaggerated swoon, which Vivi ignored. "Well, maybe Blackmoor is Alex's One." Ella turned an incredulous look on Alex. "Really?" They both turned questioning looks on Alex, who thought for a moment before speaking. Was Gavin The One? Could she imagine spending the rest of her life with him? Certainly, his mere presence set her heart racing. When he flashed one of his private, conspiratorial grins, she wanted to stop whatever she was doing and just bask in the glow of his attention. ~ Sarah MacLean

The price we pay for the complexity of life is too high. When you think of all the effort you have to put in -telephonic, technological and relational -to alter even the slightest bit of behavior in this strange world we call social life, you are left pining for the straightforwardness of primitive peoples and their physical work. ~ Jean Baudrillard

Theater people are always pining and agonizing because they're afraid that they'll be forgotten. And in America they're quite right. They will be. ~ Agnes De Mille

But I certainly know a lot of people that existed at that level and are always kind of pining for more, always thinking that the next big break, the next opportunity, the big role are just around the corner of the next audition. ~ Thomas Haden Church

city's anthem, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," was written in 1954 by two gay lovers who were pining for "the city by the bay" after moving to Brooklyn Heights. ~ David Talbot

All I want, oh dear friend of mine, is for you to go out with someone. Do something, even if it's not the magical, wonderful thing you had in mind. Don't sit around for one more second pining away for some fantasy that might never come along, because it might not even exist. ~ Lauren Morrill

but you're giving a very good impression of a lovelorn fool pining for his girl. ~ William Boyd

She handed Lord Payne a steaming cup, and he took an immediate, reckless draught. A devilish smile curved her way. "Gunpowder tea? Well done, Miss Finch. I do enjoy a lady with a sense of humor."
Now this one ... he was a rake. It was written all over him, in his fine dress and flirtatious manner. He might as well have had the word embroidered on his waistcoat, between the gold-thread flourishes. She knew all about men of his sort. Half the young ladies in Spindle Cove were either fleeing them or pining for them. ~ Tessa Dare

don't waste time pining for the past
don't hold regrets for things that happened long ago
if you let the past go, you'll be a Sufi
you'll be the child of the present moment
the young and old of now ~ Rumi

He took in the squeaky music, the vulgar and pining melodies, because passion immobilizes good taste and seriously considers what soberly would be thought of as funny and to be resented. ~ Thomas Mann

The children were pining for their father. They were dreaming about him. Though she had brought them up like they were her very life, though they knew nothing about their father, though their father did not even know about their birth or growing up - they wanted him. Sons needed to grow up inheriting their father's name.
She was Janaki - daughter of Mother Earth. Yet, she became Janaki - daughter of Janaka - under his care. These boys would get recognition only when they were regarded as Rama's offspring. Rama was Dasarathi - 'of Dasaratha' - he was fond of that name, revered it and took pride in it. These children too wanted that kind of acknowledgement. It was indeed the order of the world.
But would that happen? Would Rama embrace these children? Would he give them his name? Would he acknowledge them as descendants of his family? If that did not happen, how these innocent hearts would grieve!
If Rama accepted them as his children and took them to Ayodhya, what would happen to her?
She had left her father who loved her like his own life and taken Rama's hand.
Rama, whom she loved like her own life, had let go of her hand.
These children whom she had brought up, caring for them like her own life - would she be able to hold on to them? Should she even attempt to do that? Would they remain in her grasp even if she did? Would they not run to their father if he called them?
What did she have, other than the disgrace that Rama, bowing to public ~ Volga

You going to the game tonight?"
I was about to answer,but another voice rang out from just behind me.
"She'd better," Jack said as he wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me back against him. I could smell the fresh leather on his letterman jacket as I crunched against it.
"Why is that?" I asked,smiling and instantly warm in his arms.I still couldn't get over the fact that Jack Caputo and I were...together. It was hard to think the word. We had been friends for so long.To be honest, he had been friends with me and I had been secretly pining for him since...well, since forever.
But now he was here. It was my waist he held. It didn't seem real.
"I can't carry the team to victory without you," he said. "You're my rabbit's foot."
I craned my neck around to look at him. "I've always dreamed of some guy saying that to me."
He pressed his lips to the base of my neck, and heat rushed to my cheeks. "I love making you turn red," he whispered.
"It doesn't take much. We're in the middle of the hallway."
"You want to know what else I love?" His tone was playful.
"No," I said, but he wasn't listening. He took his fingers and lightly railed them up my spine,to the back of my neck.Instant goose bumps sprang up all over my body,and I shuddered.
"That."
I could feel his smile against my ear. Jack was always smiling.It was what made him so likable.
By this time,Jules had snaked her way through the throng of students. "Hello, ~ Brodi Ashton

Ali stares dreamily at the shadows of the garden. I wonder why he's the one who seems to be pining for something. I look intently at the dark sky as I consider his questions and finally I realise what 'home' means to me. Even with a roof over my head I'm still homeless in my heart. Bricks and mortar don't mean anything. I'm not sure if I want a real home right now, somewhere I belong. Not that one is on offer or available to someone like me. Some days, I long for the freedom of the streets, strange as it may sound to anyone who has never been homeless. My bedsit and the job are like a hamster's cage, giving me temporary shelter but making me go round and round in circles ~ A. Zukowski

He didn't care for Clive [anymore], but he could suffer from him. ~ E.M. Forster

But fierce as my attraction was, I also knew that it was more than just a physical attraction [ ... ], more than just a momentenry surge of animal desire. I understood that she wasn't a terribly articulate person and nothing she said that afternoon was particularly brilliant or memorable. And yet there I was in a state of maximum torment - burning and longing and pining, a man trapped in the spines of love. ~ Paul Auster

Be not wishing and pining but thankfully content. For it is a short bridge between wanting and regret."
- from "Dimpellumpzki ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Maybe I selfishly figured out Clay was as lonely as I am. Or maybe I did hope he was pining after me a little. Not realistically, of course, but in a faraway kind of way. Like in the way one might daydream about a popular boy in school who the teacher assigns as your lab partner. Your relationship is purely based on frog spleens and formaldehyde, but sometimes he laughs at your joke and you think... maybe. Maybe.

It's the "maybe" I'm mourning. The daydreams, even. That's what I'm all out of sort about. My lab partner asked someone else to the dance, and I'm left with the uncomfortable realization he was just being polite. ~ Erin Hahn

He left the building, fury propelling his steps, and got into his car. Feeling the way he did just then, Ian realized he shouldn't be driving, but he wasn't about to sit outside this apartment. Not when Cecilia might think he sat there pining for her. He revved the engine and threw the transmission into drive. The tires squealed as he sped off, burning rubber. He hadn't gone more than a quarter mile when he saw the red-and-blue lights of a sheriff's car flashing behind him. ~ Debbie Macomber

E had trampled her poor, pining heart, and the wound was still raw, even these many years later. ~ Ransom Riggs

Ordinary homesickness is a miserable feeling, a temporary illness healed by reunion or return. But pining for a home that exists only in your memory is a more chronic ailment. It flares up painfully then subsides, but it's never really cured. ~ Cheryl Anne Tuggle

Not the rich viol, trump, cymbal, nor horn,
Guitar, nor cittern, nor the pining flute,
Are half so sweet as tender human words. ~ Bryan Procter

I thought my duty was to restore Haan, but Haan is not King Cosugi or the burned-down palace or the ruins of the great estates or the dead nobles and their descendants pining for glory-these are but parts of an experiment at a way of life for the people of Haan, her true essence. When the experiment has proven to be a failure, one must be willing to try new paths, new ways of doing things. ~ Ken Liu

When it comes to love, always be open. Because the second youre not pining after a boy, or a boyfriend, amazing love comes into your life. ~ Emma Roberts

She gasped as he captured the picture from her hands, "Pining over what could have been? Funny, if you hadn't spread your legs for anyone with a pulse, you might be standing here married to the other Karasphalous brother right now," Nikos growled as he placed the photo back in its original spot and turned just as Adriana's hand made contact with the side of his smug face.
"Go to hell!" she spat as she grasp the long folds of her dress and stormed toward the master bedroom like the hounds of hell were on her heels.
Just before slamming the door behind her she heard him bark, "I'm already there! ~ Julie Garver

Their fantasy men--like Yon-sama--not only wouldn't spend their days barking drink orders from the couch, they might not ever be home at all. And that's okay. For these women the pleasure of a fantasy lover comes not from having him but from pining for him. ~ Pamela Druckerman

I'm not the kind of man to bottle up my feelings, Kells. I don't sit up in my room pining away, writing love poems. I'm not a dreamer. I'm a fighter. I'm a man of action, and it will take all of my self-control not to fight for this. When something needs to be done, I do it. When I feel something, I act on it. I don't see any reason why Ren deserves to get the girl of his dreams and I don't. It doesn't seem fair that this happens to me twice. ~ Colleen Houck

Not Pining," she admitted. "But I look at you and you're so ... Awkward, and scruffy, and fearless, and just so intensely yourself, and I remember why I fell so hard for you. And in another universe, who knows? ~ Emily Horner

Pining for what could have been only holds people back from living their lives now. Life is full of surprises, and it doesn't help us to fixate on regrets or try to recover what has been lost. ~ Jeff Goins

For years I'd been awaiting that overriding urge I'd always heard about, the narcotic pining that draws childless women ineluctably to strangers' strollers in parks. I wanted to be drowned by the hormonal imperative, to wake one day and throw my arms around your neck, reach down for you, and pray that while that black flower bloomed behind my eyes you had just left me with child. (With child: There's a lovely warm sound to that expression, an archaic but tender acknowledgement that for nine months you have company wherever you go. Pregnant, by contrast, is heavy and bulging and always sounds to my ear like bad news: "I'm pregnant." I instinctively picture a sixteen-year-old at the dinner table- pale, unwell, with a scoundrel of a boyfriend- forcing herself to blurt out her mother's deepest fear.) (27) ~ Lionel Shriver

We're at war.
On the verge of an apocalypse filled with monsters and torture in a nightmare world.
And I'm standing here, a moonstruck teenager pining for an enemy soldier. What am I, crazy?
This time, I'm the first to turn away. ~ Susan Ee

They were all there (at the airport) - the deaf ammoomas, the cantankerous, arthritic appoopas, the pining wives, scheming uncles, children with the runs. The fiancées to be reassessed. The teacher's husband still waiting for his Saudi visa. The teacher's husband's sisters waiting for their dowries. The wire-bender's pregnant wife. "Mostly sweeper class," Baby Kochamma said grimly, and looked away while a mother, no wanting to give up her good place near the railing, aimed her distracted baby's penis into an empty bottle while he smiled and waved at the people around him... ~ Arundhati Roy

What did he have to mope about, really? What more did he want? ... Love. Purpose. Those are the things that you can't plan for. Those are the things that just happen. And what if they don't happen? Do you spend your whole life pining for them? Waiting to be happy? ~ Rainbow Rowell

Hey, guys," I say as we stop in front of them. "Have a good summer?"
"I had an awesome summer," Jack says with his trademark smirk. "I got together with the ex-girlfriend I dumped more than a year ago because I'm a miserable fuck who never stopped pining for her. Oh, wait, that was you, Holt, wasn't it? ~ Leisa Rayven

Time plays like an accordion in the way it can stretch out and compress itself in a thousand melodic ways. Months on end may pass blindingly in a quick series of chords, open-shut, together-apart; and then a single melancholy week may seem like a year's pining, one long unfolding note. ~ Julia Glass

I have to admit, you having a non-psycho, pining, or pissed-off ex is definitely a plus to our ongoing situation, I blurted. Logan grinned. ~ Kristen Ashley

The filmmakers who I'm pining to work for aren't ringing my phone off the hook. ~ Sean Astin

He thinks I'm pining away for you, and he thinks I should be his mate ~ Alyssa Day

Even in teen movies like Pretty in Pink or Sixteen Candles, I always cringed a little when the unpopular girl finally got the hot, popular guy she'd been pining for. What on earth would they talk about after the credits rolled? I didn't want reality. I preferred the safety of fantasy. ~ Patricia Weitz

Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness.

"No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

SoulsThat we might break these molds
And free our restless souls
Start to believe
That we can rise above
Our pettiness and love
Like we ain't loved before
Free on this earth
As the surf that rolls
And crashes on the shore
And hey now don't run and hide
Your little heart away
If it's gone
We'll sure never find it
Pining for lost innocence
Tantalisingly I saw
Our shadows moving through the door
Traces from a different time
When I was yours and you were truly mine
All mine ~ David Gray

That was the deal with the really good-looking boys: they automatically assumed you were pining and panting for them and wouldn't be satisfied until you'd had their babies, no matter how ugly their personalities might be. ~ Sarra Manning

I've been making 16mm urban landscape films about San Francisco for many years. I choose different nonfiction themes to investigate and am generally interested in surfacing lesser-known histories. I like to investigate and illuminate these histories, combining them with my own unconventional storytelling style, which is generally a stream-of-consciousness voiceover involving a steady stream of personal reflections on pining over unavailable women. ~ Jenni Olson

Pining for things we lost is the same as hoping for things that can never be. Both roads dead-end in despair. ~ Rick Yancey

If I have fully diagnosed the cause and nature of your condition, you are wasting away in pining and longing for your former good fortune. It is the loss of this which, as your imagination works upon you, has so corrupted your mind. I know the many disguises of that monster, Fortune, and the extent to which she seduces with friendship the very people she is striving to cheat, until she overwhelms them with unbearable grief at the suddenness of her desertion ~ Boethius

May I ask a question, doctor? Is she pining in this close place, too? When her sister comes, will her sister take her away? ~ Wilkie Collins

You're pining," said Jace.
Alec shrugged. "Look who's talking. 'oh I love her. Oh, she's my sister. Oh why, why, why - ~ Cassandra Clare

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head,
so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,
like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables
like a charm, like a spell.

Falling in love
is glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heart
like a tiger ready to kill; a flame's fierce licks under the skin.
Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in.

I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,
in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze,
staring back from anyone's face, from the shape of a cloud,
from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me

as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are
on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream.

"You ~ Carol Ann Duffy

I thank you, Wilhelm, for your heartfelt sympathy, for your well-intentioned advice, but beg you to be quiet. Let me stick it out. Blessedly exhausted as I am, I have strength enough to carry through. I honor religion, you know that, I feel it is a staff for many weary souls, refreshment for many a one who is pining away. But--can it be, must it be, the same thing for everyone? If you look at the great world, you see thousands for whom it wasn't, thousands for whom it will not be the same, preached or unpreached, and must it then be the same for me? Does not the son of God Himself say that those would be around Him whom the Father had given Him? But if I am not given? If the Father wants to keep me for Himself, as my heart tells me?--I beg you, do not misinterpret this, do not see mockery in these innocent words. What I am laying before you is my whole soul; otherwise I would rather have kept silent, as I do not like to lose words over things that everyone knows as little about as I do. What else is it but human destiny to suffer out one's measure, drink up one's cup?--And if the chalice was too bitter for the God from heaven on His human lips, why should I boast and pretend that it tastes sweet to me? And why should I be ashamed in the terrible moment when my entire being trembles between being and nothingness, since the past flashes like lightning above the dark abyss of the future and everything around me is swallowed up, and the world perishes with me?--Is that not the vo ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Every four years, the Republican Party pines for another Reagan. But Ronald Reagan, Governor of California for eight years, couldn't get elected in today's not-so-Golden State. Jerry Brown, Governor Moonbeam back in the Seventies, now presides as Governor Twilight, lead vampire of a malign alliance of unionized bureaucrats and a swollen dependency class that maintains them in office at the expense of a remorselessly shrinking productive class. As the nation's demographic profile trends ever more Californian perhaps Norquist's predictions of naturally conservative Hispanics pining for a new Coolidge will come to fruition. Or perhaps Bob Beckel's more crudely determinative analysis will prove correct
that, in a multicultural society, jostling identity groups will stick with the party of ethnocultural spoils. ~ Mark Steyn

I think that the right girl can wipe away the memories of the wrong girl." Wow. Okay.
"Sure." But I don't think that. If that were true, there wouldn't be so many humans pining for their long, lost love. We didn't always
want what was right. We wanted what we couldn't have ~ Tarryn Fisher

Sometimes he felt like he'd been gone his whole life
in exile, away from the place he was supposed to be, and that, soldier-like, he was pining to be returned. Homesick for a place he'd never been. ~ Gillian Flynn

Not all pain can be consoled. Sometimes all a pining person really need is an ear to listen and a heart to understand them. ~ J. Yuvanesh

They send word on the wing of a bird but faces are my currency, and till i'm paid in full, they may as well send nothing. ~ K. Ancrum

She was far too busy living out a passionate romance with Jesus Christ to be pining after an earthly prince. ~ Leslie Ludy

The way a love letter longs to be read
I long for you.
The way the poor Kane longs for his sled
I long for you.

The way the moon longs for the dark of night
I long for you.
The way a nestling bird longs for flight
I long for you.

I am blessed
and I am cursed.
I have waited for so long.
I need you to come to me.
And remind me
of who I was once. ~ Kamand Kojouri

It's always gratifying to share a hobby with a friend, and pining for erstwhile suitors falls into that category. In the months to come, Libby and I would analyze our respective exes with the gusto and intellectual rigor of Jesuits. ~ Patricia Marx

Humans are constantly, and in every way, comparing themselves to one another, which, given the brief nature of their existence, seems an oddity and, for that matter, a waste. Nevertheless, this is the driving influence behind every human's social development, their emotional health and sense of joy, and, sadly, their greatest tragedies. It is as though something that helped them function and live well has gone missing, and they are pining for that missing thing in all sorts of odd methods, none of which are working. The greater tragedy is that very few people understand they have the disease. This seems strange as well because it is obvious. To be sure, it is killing them, and yet sustaining their social and economic systems. They are an entirely beautiful people with a terrible problem. ~ Donald Miller