Caroline Knapp Quotes

There was always something missing in Montreal.

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time.

What are these voices outside love's open door, make us throw off our contentment, and beg for something more?

Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate.

That is the worst moment, when you feel you have lost / The desires for all that was most desirable, / Before you are contented with what you can desire; / Before you know what is left to be desired; / And you go on wishing that you could desire / What desire has left behind.

Tired of myself longing for what I have not

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.

If you have everything, then you don't want to go on. It's the lacking that makes you search for something better.

Boredom: the desire for desires.

Longing, for everyone, is always there, isn't it? More intense at some times than others. You get closer to less longing - an odd metaphoric phrasing, I realize - then, you are further and longing more than ever again.

Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.

'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.

Many women long for what eludes them, and like not what is offered them.

I'm a fan of leaving people hungry; I don't like leaving people satisfied.

I never want to be satisfied.

If you desire, you are restless.

I don't think I have ever been completely satisfied, which is probably the right way to say it. I always felt like I wanted more.

I want so much that is not here and do not know where to go.

People are searching for something they don't have in their lives. There's an unfulfilled need.

Don't you ever imagine things differently than what they are? Oh, Marilla, how much you miss.

I finally had what I'd wantes all those years. Except now that I had it, i felt as empty as this unkempt pool I was dangling my legs into.

To gain anything we have longed for is only to discover how vain and empty it is; and even though we are always living in expectation of better things, at the same time we often repent and long to have the past back again.

The want of a thing is perplexing enough, but the possession of it, is intolerable.

Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other.

I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing