Limbo Quotes

“You think the final act of love is setting them free to Rainbow Bridge? That is not the final act of love. The final act of love is releasing them from your leash of grief so they can be free in the heaven on the other side of the Bridge. Until you resolve your grief, you bind them to you in the land between Heaven and Earth while they wait, suspended between the worlds, for you to heal. When you are free of your grief, they are free of your grief.”
― Kate McGahan, JACK McAFGHAN: Reflections on Life with my Master

“But here, just at this point: this is limbo. There is the sense that if you stay at this point for too long, stop at this point of oblivion for a certain amount of time, you will just cease to exist. And we cannot move.”
― Irvine Welsh, Filth

“Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.”
― Brooks Atkinson

“How one can never truly leave. And never quite return. Do you understand?”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Have you ever wondered what language they speak in Limbo?”
― Lee T. Gallup

“Limbo

When you wait for a man to make up his mind about you, your life cannot move forward. You can't put your whole heart in anything else if you're betting on something that may not come through. You can build the life of your dreams without him. You can start today. But first, you need to take your heart off the table. You have a few precious years to do what you need to do. Don't waste them on him.”
― Lang Leav, September Love

“Well, limbo is not a good place to be.”
― Bill Joy

“There is a time limit to how long a spirited young person can be kept in cold storage.”
― Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head

“For the first time back then, I thought about everything seriously. The past and the future, both equally unknowable, and also this ongoing situation that the consulates call "transitory" but that we know in everyday language as "the present.”
― Anna Seghers, Transit

“Sometimes chaos is the very thing that deliberately shakes up our neatly ordered world’s in order to get us out of the neatly ordered ruts that have kept us stuck.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“I will go back and forth and never be”
― Dorothea Lasky, Rome: Poems

“Please don't shut me out. Or if you're going to, just tell me, tell me so that I'm not dangling in this in-between space.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“The step that we are on is only a step to the next place, and no step regardless of how massive is ever a destination.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“How long can I sit here not doing the thing
I want to do.”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“When the release never comes, it turns into torture. There is nothing worse than to be perpetually on the verge of heaven, while trapped always in hell.”
― Mark Romel, The Mistletoe Murders: A Nietzschean Murder Mystery

“I thought graduation was going to be the start of my life, but I felt in limbo. When was it going to be my turn? I’d fought my depression-like hell to get to graduation, someone moved the goalpost.”
― Natalie M. Esparza, Spectacle: Discover a Vibrant Life through the Lens of Curiosity

“Now its clear
My life is not my own”
― Loraine Masiya Mponela

“We would walk away from the past, if we had a future.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, Yet Another New Land

“The Storm Stranger by Stewart Stafford

Were I to shed forty coats,
Or forty layers of this skin,
I'd stay an intruder in myself,
At a crossroads in a storm.

Stranger in my own country,
Pariah to everything beloved,
Organ rejection by my own body,
A lantern wanderer in limbo.

All foul, cast out by my lamp,
Saving those mistreating me,
Traversing sanity's outer rings,
I turn my collar up and trudge on.

© 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Pye turned his paw over and chewed his claws. “Humph. What you think of me is none of my business.”
“You don’t know, do you?”
“Know more than you . . . Know what?”
“You are dead.”
Pye patted his paws. “No, I’m not.” He rolled on his back and stretched, enjoying the warmth of the fire.
“I’ve been here since 1665.”
Pye chuckled. “You are, if I may so, in remarkably good condition.” Apart from the hole in your head, missing tail, and pulmonic plague cough.
“I’ve seen them come. Seen them go. Seem them hang around in limbo. That’s what it’s called when beings don’t leave this Earth.”
“Purgatory!”
“I am responsible for many deaths,” Rita said.
“You!?”
“They couldn’t build the graves fast enough to bury the bodies.”
“I don’t understand how a mere stump-tailed fur ball could endanger life.”
“If I were you I'd think that.” A silence followed before Rita said, “I did not work alone.”
“Oh?”
― Fusty Luggs, Heaven Won't Wait

“Kad se čovek izloguje, kao da je umro. Oflajn je čist limb: prokleta i diskonektovana duša tumara večnim vatrama čistilišta u potrazi za vajerlesom
i notifikacijama.”
― Aleksandar Ilić, PR

“Dorner leaned back in his chair, imagining what might have happened if he hadn’t injected himself. The limbo of sleep, dark and secret— Drowning in the sea of voices. Not waking, not fighting. Letting them storm him without resisting.”
― Rich Shapero, Rin, Tongue and Dorner

“In Dante’s Inferno, Dante and his guide Virgil visited the Castle of Limbo, in the center of which was an idyllic green meadow. This was where the great pagan souls, the virtuous pagans, spent eternity. Limbo was a place of calm contemplation and tranquility. Its denizens were not tormented and tortured but left to their own devices. They could converse with one another among green fields and scenic towers. The most illustrious of them radiated an inner light, reflecting their genius. Even the Abrahamic God was dazzled by the enlightened pagans, the great heroes of philosophy, art, poetry, science and mathematics. No one can quench their light, and no one can remove their joy.”
― Thomas Stark, Castalia: The Citadel of Reason

“The nineties wouldn’t be such a bad place to be stuck.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“Demons can exist in purgatory or limbo, just as they exist on Earth, but they are there to test the soul of the sinner.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“When the defense attorney finished her opening statement, which included a lot of body movement due to the fact that the bar exam that she passed only included limbo references”
― J.S. Mason, A Dragon, A Pig, and a Rabbi Walk into a Bar...and other Rambunctious Bites

“Middle School is such a perfect name for middle school. If I were told that there was a commission for nationwide title submissions for the grades between elementary and high and a committee was appointed to boil down the entries in search of a name that was simple, public friendly, easy to spell, syllabically chantable (Mid-dle-school! Mid-dle-school!) devoid of possible copyright infringement, and most importantly, evocative of the emotion of being In Limbo, and Middle School was the out and out winner, I would believe that.”
― Ani Baker, Handsome Vanilla

“My debut poetry book "I was not born a sad poet"- was born as a result of me trying to live, understand myself, understand where life was taking me to and the environment I existed in. I was not in control of my life. I was in a state of limbo. For many years
Writing became my outlet for every emotion that showed up. Writing became my survival kit.”
― Loraine Masiya Mponela

“Možda nešto veliko, neponjantno preveliko, neka tiha vizija koju razumijevam sada skoro sveukupno rasapnut, nejasno nesvoj, nejak slučiti siže na shvatljivo i mnogo manje slobodan od njegove sadržine sasvim se maknuti; ja osjetim da više nisam ja. Možda nikada to nisam ni bio, ali ćutim, obuhvaćam, dotičem se spoznaje da i ako ima rastrovljenja, ono malne mora da je u neposrednom prepoznavanju vlastitih niskosti, prihvaćanju krivde pa i kad ne znamo iznaći što to bivanje jest, kud li rastrovljenje, kamoli krivda. I ja se nalazim u sivo-mlačnoj sobici bazdećoj po oporo oštroj bolesti gdje miruješ u svojoj bljedoplavoj haljini sa cvjetovima šarovito kičeroznim; osjet u meni je izvoran, stid je gusto neprobojan, gotovo me je strah dizati pogleda prema tebi, tvojemu licu okrunjenom bljedilom kuhinjskoga prozora. Mjesto tebe, u pod gledam, u pločice, postiđen uopće ti se obraćati, biti kraj tebe makar u predstanju pa i ako sam cijeloga života najviše htio baš ovdje uz tebe se nalaziti.
“Dogodilo se da si umrla. A sve što sam postigao, najviše na prevaru, uvjeravajući ljude da sam ono što nisam, dižući na tome cijeli svoj život, sve se počelo urušavati baš isti dan kad sam dobio vijest o tebi. Osjećao sam se raspadnut. Najniži. Sjećam se samo da nisam više imao snage...”
I sjećam se da si sjedila skoro i ne slušajući tako savršeno smirena, shvaćajući zaista i najniže gmizavce kakav sam ja, kao hrid kojega zapljuskuju tanahni valovi, zeleno-prozirni u odsustvu svjetla, odolijevala si mojim opravdanjima i bijednim mojim nenijama sasvim neusiljeno, sve da nisi pokazivala ni grote ljutnje - tek se suverenosti jedne dosjećam, udaljenosti, dostojne nedodirljivosti, a nakraju i tvoga šapta:
“Ali si se usudio.”
“Čuj me... Nije tako. To ipak nisam ja...”
― Ivan Baran, Veliki pad

“BOOKS ABOUT DEPRESSION TYPICALLY DO NOT INCLUDE A CHAPTER about when people are nearly better—what comes between the worst passing and the achievement of wellness. However, those who experience residual depression know firsthand that it can be depression’s most awkward—as well as its most precarious—phase. It is a state of limbo many times over, one that may determine the course of recovery. I remember my wife Laura asking me, “Do you want me to treat you like a sick person or a well person?” I paused because I didn’t know. Spouses, bosses, and friends who were sympathetic throughout disclosure and treatment may lose patience with making allowances. So, too, the sufferer may be done with depression, well before depression is done with him.”
― Jonathan Rottenberg, The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic