Poignancy Quotes

“I am easily moved to tears and rarely survive a visit to the cinema without shedding them, racked, as I am, by the most perfunctory, meretricious or even callously sentimental attempts at poignancy (something about the exterior of the human face, so vast and palpable, with the eyes and the lips: it is all writ too large for me, too immediate for me.)”
― Martin Amis, Experience

“Every moment is utterly unique and will not be continued in eternity. This fact gives life its poignancy and should concentrate your attention on what you are experiencing now.”
― Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

“It seems to me that our lives are consumed by countless wasting years, but only a few shining moments. I missed mine. Yes is what I should have said. Of course I should have said yes.”
― Mordecai Richler, Solomon Gursky Was Here

“Memories lurk like dustballs in the backs of drawers. The stereo is a special model that plays only music fraught with poignant associations.”
― Jay McInerney

“Some are born rich
While others poor;
Some are born free
While others captives;
Some are born blessed
While others deprived;
Some are born strong
While others weak;
And some are born great
While others slaves.
It is only in this life
blessings are unequal.”
― Emmanuel Aghado, Coup '66

“Why was he in this state? Or perhaps the question was why had he not always been in this state? Why had he not always found life so disturbing and so poignant?”
― Edward St. Aubyn, Dunbar

“There was a kindliness about intoxication - there was that indescribable gloss and glamour it gave, like the memories of ephemeral and faded evenings. After a few high-balls there was magic in the tall glowing Arabian night of the Bush Terminal Building - its summit a peak of sheer grandeur, gold and dreaming against the inaccessible sky. And Wall Street, the crass, the banal - again it was a triumph of gold, a gorgeous sentient spectacle; it was where the great kings kept the moment for their wars...
...The fruit of youth, or the grape, the transitory magic of the brief passage from darkness to darkness - the old illusion that truth and beauty were in some way entwined.”
― Scott F. Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“The scene sucker-punched Max. He never saw it coming. It encapsulated in one poignant instant the tragic beauty of his family history.”
― Sol Luckman, Snooze: A Story of Awakening

“I tore open a bag of truffle chips---really truffle-flavored potato chips---that cost $3.95: a novelty I'd never buy on my own. I shook them onto a small plate and the scent of truffles, at once earthy and faintly metallic, filled the air. That scent always triggers a free-floating longing in me, the ache of a bittersweet memory, but with no specific memory attached. (Did such poignancy make the chips worth twice as much as the Lay's?)”
― Michelle Huneven, Search