Pining Quotes

“You're not nothing to me," he said, almost to himself. "That's precisely the problem.”
― Emily J. Taylor, Hotel Magnifique

“Let him spend every night in the dirt if it meant getting his mornings with her.”
― Dana Schwartz, Anatomy: Love story

“He didn’t care for Clive [anymore], but he could suffer from him.”
― E.M. Forster, Maurice

“That's why I'm crying. Because Danny told me I'm a beautiful girl, and I nearly fell off the barstool. You've ruined me.”
― Sally Thorne, The Hating Game

“When her mouth touched his, it was like a blade glancing off metal—it made something dull and dark inside him briefly light up with violence before the emptiness came flooding in like a black lake.

It never once occurred to him that the reason messing around always left him feeling so angry and unsatisfied was because he was craving something else.”
― Nenia Campbell Campbell, Quid Pro Quo

“Why, I have never anything to do. I am always free, and I always will be free if you want
me.”
― Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

“Lockwood… Through half-closed eyes I watched him now, trapping him tight between my lashes.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Hollow Boy

“I wonder if Ada would be able to feel the sapphic vibes if she could see the things she and I wrote to each other through the eyes of someone who was an outsider to our friendship.”
― Cynthia So, If You Still Recognise Me

“The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence, Cee, and I don't think I can blame the heat.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“All at once she was eighteen, a stupid girl with a stupid crush who believed that someone like Will might actually see her as anything more the his best friend's kid sister.”
― Courtney Walsh, A Cross-Country Christmas

“It was hard not to dwell on that shadow in my heart, the shadow that trailed my every step. I hadn't felt like painting since I'd arrived- and that place inside me where all those colours and shapes and lights had come from had become still and quiet and dull.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“I thought my heart had healed from the soul splitting anguish she’d caused me. As I watched her disappear from sight, another man’s arm around her, I wondered if I’d ever had a stitch in it at all.”
― Sarah A. Bailey, The Soulmate Theory

“How was I supposed to explain that it was the kind of kiss that kept me up at night for years on end? The kind of kiss that made my skin feel like pinpricks whenever I thought about it, even now. The kind of kiss I’ve been wanting to replicate since the day it happened but have yet to experience anything that even comes close.”
― Sarah A. Bailey, The Soulmate Theory

“Rose-leaves? But, my dear girl, at this season?”
― Georgette Heyer, Venetia

“I've always known I would watch you die," he said. "I've like the idea less and less as the years have gone by. I'd trade many a year to give you an extra month, and still consider I'd got the better end of the deal.”
― Katherine Macdonald, Forest of Dreams and Whispers

“Am I chasing an empty idea,
Or is the empty idea chasing me?
Everything that once was is gone.
What’s left, can I ever see?

My mind feels heavy
And yet my thoughts are few.
It takes up all and none of me.
You are all I ever knew.”
― October Del Pozo, Beneath

“Like everyone else in fandom, Ada and I say I love you to each other like it's punctuation. But lately I've been finding it harder to say it to her because I've discovered that I mean it more seriously than I thought. Even just typing those three words requires an effort that feels deeply and nauseatingly physical, like reaching into my own ribcage and turning my lungs inside out.”
― Cynthia So, If You Still Recognise Me

“When will you arrive? Why is your radiance distant from my eyes? You drop through the branches when I sleep at the roots. You pour yourself out like the light of an afternoon and yet somewhere you linger, outside the day.”
― Selby Wynn Schwartz, After Sappho

“The past is nowhere to abandon your present.”
― Courtney M. Privett, Dustlight

“I can't decide if the universe loves me or hates me. Maybe it loves to hate me. Maybe it's mischievous.
Because I'm in love. I’m madly, deeply, painfully in love with a girl that I know I’ll never have. Because the heavens created arguably the most perfect creature in their repertoire, dangled her in front of me for my entire life, and chose to rip her away before I had the chance to tell her how I felt.”
― Sarah A. Bailey, The Soulmate Theory

“I’d spent years replacing her lips with so many others, all in an attempt to heal the scars she left on mine.”
― Sarah A. Bailey, The Soulmate Theory

“His mouth, his hands— his soul— had left their prints all over me. I’d only given Carter my lips, but he’d left them forever branded.”
― Sarah A. Bailey, The Soulmate Theory

“I knew I wasn’t capable of falling in love unless you walked back into my life...And I’d wait five years again. Ten. Hell, I’d wait this whole lifetime for you if it meant I could have you in the next one.”
― Sarah A. Bailey, The Soulmate Theory

“I wish she didn’t hate me. I wish she’d tease and talk to me like she used to. I wish she’d let me touch her the way I needed to. - Tristan, Apparently, I'm A Bitch”
― Demi Blaize, Apparently, I'm A Bitch: A Spicy Friends To Lovers Romantic Comedy

“He was always my favorite puzzle to try to solve, even if I always felt like I was missing half the pieces.”
― Trinity Black, Predatory Obsession

“He found himself bitterly unprepared for the agony of wnat. He was used to sordid fantasies and sick desires, used to craving flesh and sex. This... this was something else. He wanted to pull her into the bath with him, to stroke that flame-gold hair from her back and kiss every muscle and scar while she lay slotted against his chest. He wanted to dance with her all night long, body against his, breath on his face. He wanted to wake in her arms, for her stiff face to smile at him, for those lips to speak softness in his ears.”
― Katherine Macdonald, Forest of Dreams and Whispers

“One was a torrential stream with nowhere to go, and the other a pond that was all but dried up. They were clearly a perfect match—if only one were to go into the other, the former would no longer churn restlessly with no outlet, and the latter would be filled and watered, parched cracks soon mended.

But neither of them would do it, each hiding from the other.”
― Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou, The Husky and His White Cat Shizun: Erha He Ta De Bai Mao Shizun (Novel) Vol. 2

“Alexa emits a sad but fond chuckle and once again reaches over to gently slip her hand into mine,
When she lets go, I can't help but wish she didn't.”
― Carli J. Corson, It's a Love/Skate Relationship

“There's a particular kind of torture to the waiting, the pining, the slowest burn, like setting fire to wet logs. One that flickers and pops like grease in a pan. Wondering if you'll yearn for him all four years.”
― Ebony LaDelle, You've Got a Place Here, Too: An Anthology of Black Love Stories Set at HBCUs

“The thing about a slow burn is even with all that logic, the agony you feel of wanting what you want doesn't go away.”
― Ebony LaDelle, You've Got a Place Here, Too: An Anthology of Black Love Stories Set at HBCUs