Phantom Limb Quotes

“I wish I didn't have to think about you. You wanted to impress me; well, I'm not impressed, I'm disgusted...You wanted to make damn good and sure I'd never be able to turn over in bed again without feeling that body beside me, not there but tangible, like a leg that's been cut off. Gone but the place still hurts.”
― Margaret Atwood, Life Before Man

“Sometimes I hear Mark laugh, and some days in the car the right song will come on the satellite radio and I'll feel him there tingling like a phantom limb. Like he's sitting there next to me in the dark. But I know that's not so. And I know that when you die there's not even darkness, and I know Mark and me won't meet on some cloud or in some pit of fire. And I guess that's a good thing. I couldn't take those eyes seeing what's become of me, those eyes looking down at my hands and my chewed-up ragged nails.”
― Jordan Harper, Love and Other Wounds

“It is life and death,
Life like you are left
With a phantom limb:

To lose your wife
Or your best friend

- With the right leg gone -

Attempting to feel,
A tempting to mend

- Or an arm stretched strong -

Our tendencies to steal,
Thence heal the way it ends;

Prolonging as we reach back again,
But then again,
So far? See, to reject what is real,
My love, has been
Our greatest sin”
― Criss Jami

“Addiction is but a shadow stretching from hunger, a phantom limb.”
― Unknown Author