Amy Hempel Quotes

I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on pavement.

It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.

Several times in my life I've gone through long periods without sex or any other kind of physical contact. The hunger it produces is deep and low; it's possible to lose track of it, to forget or fail to perceive how it's emptied everything out of you and made the world papery and thin. Touch starved, you brush against existence like a stick against dry leaves. You become insubstantial yourself, a hungry ghost.

Friendship is but a name. I love no one.

Now from his breast into the eyes the ache of longing mounted, and he wept at last, his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms, longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer spent in rough water where his ship went down under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea. Few men can keep alive through a big serf to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind: and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband, her white arms round him pressed as though forever.

I did not know how to reach him, how to catch up with him... The land of tears is so mysterious.

The lifetime we've left behind with strangers Promises and lies both have their dangers. I just can't be wrong enough and I can't hide for long enough So far away, but I still feel your pain.

Part of me aches at the thought of her being so close yet so untouchable.

He slides his hand over my cheek, one finger anchored behind my ear. Then he tilts his head down and kisses me, sending a warm ache through my body. I wrap my hands around his arm, holding him there as long as I can. When he touches me, the hollowed-out feeling in my chest and stomach is not as noticeable.

I’ll wait for you. Come back. The words were not meaningless, but they didn’t touch him now. It was clear enough - one person waiting for another was like an arithmetical sum, and just as empty of emotion. Waiting. Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached. Waiting was a heavy word.

I long for another human face just as I fear it.

You are so close, and I can’t reach you.

I think living with the absence of someone we love is like living in front of a mountain from which a person - a speck in the distance, on some distance ridge - is perpetually waving.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you lonely.

The only thing that has ever consumed me is love from time to time. Feeling like, 'What is it? How do I get it?'

One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.

Simon stopped breathing until her forefinger touched his nipple, and then his hand shot up to cover hers. "I want you," he said. Her eyes flicked downward, and her lips curved ever so slightly. "I know." "No," he groaned, pulling her closer. "I want to be in your heart. I want-" His entire body shuddered when their skin touched. "I want to be in your soul.

The mark which has dominated all my work is this longing for life, this sense of exclusion, which doesn't lessen but augments this love of life.

There is not a single heart but has its moments of longing.

It has been strange to me to return to life and to feel that I have any sympathy with human beings, after the long interval of quiet and indifference which succeeded my marriage.

How is it possible to miss a woman whom you kept at a distance, so that when she was gone you would not miss her?

the lonliest sound in the world is other people making love.

I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against the want of you; of squeezing it into little inkdrops, And posting it.

The worst thing you can do if you miss or need someone is let them know it.

And it was lonely, to yearn, all alone.