Susan Minot Quotes

Sharp nostalgia, infinite and terrible, for what I already possess.

I want my friend to miss me as long as I miss him.

The act of longing for something will always be more intense than the requiting of it.

The essence of man is, discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.

All we really want in life is to connect to other human beings, and when you desperately want to connect physically to one specific human being and you can't? That's something I find compelling.

Even as a child I had a strong relationship with yearning and desire. And loss. Those things spoke to me.

I dream of you to wake; would that I might Dream of you and not wake but slumber on.

Absence does not make the heart grow fonder, but it sure heats up the blood.

'Free' is more of that 'familiarity breeds contempt' kind of thing. It's about saying 'Wait, I'm longing for something more than I have and I don't know what it is that I want, but I know I want it.' It has nothing to do with what I'm going through, personally.

There has not been one day since I left that I have not thought about Haiti.

I know what it's like to be in one place and dream of another. I also know what it's like to feel that nostalgia is a fairly useless thing because it is stasis.

The reason can give nothing at all Like the response to desire.

I have no clue why, but maybe sometimes when there's someone you don't hear from, it's the person you want to hear from the most.

I wish I could just hug you all, but I'm not gonna.

You can miss someone every day and still be glad you don't have to see them.

Each of them always gravitating toward the other. Yet still they do not touch.

For me, a place unvisited is like an unrequited love. A dull ache that- try as you might to think it away, to convince yourself that she really wasn't the right country for you- just won't leave you in peace.

Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.

You know that thing when you break up with someone and you’re walking around the town where you both live and you’re just really hoping to see them? You know that you’re not supposed to see them, but there’s nothing you want more.

Help me to withstand your beauty as it stands out of reach. Give me the capacity to forget ever having felt your touch.

When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have.

I think I drift toward sad love songs.

In 1957's 'There's No You,' Sinatra is suspended at the intersection of a loss he can't face and a memory he can't relinquish.

I know what it's like to have someone coming home who looks at you not in the way they used to in the old days, and I've seen my own face contorted with sadness and rage in the mirror.

This was nostalgia in the literal Greek sense: the pain of not being able to return to one's home and family.