Absence Quotes

“How can you know what is missing if you’ve never met it? You must know of something’s existence before you can notice its absence. ”
― E.L. Konigsburg, The View from Saturday

“Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Because the enormous narcissism of their parents deprived Will and Tom of suitable role models, both brothers learned to identify with absence. Consequently, even if something beneficial fortuitously entered their lives they immediately treated it as temporary. By the time they were teenagers they were already accustomed to a discontinuous lifestyle marked by constant threats of abandonment and the lack of any emotional stability. Unfortunately, "accustomed to" here is really synonymous with "damaged by.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“Would that thy love, beloved, had less trust in me, that it might be more anxious!”
― Héloïse, The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

“The world needs someone they can admire from a distance; from a very far distance.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“YOU YOU YOU

your eyes, thick as a high school scrapbook
crackling and yellow, curling at the edges
a book of myths
in which i do not appear.”
― Clint Catalyst, Caresses Soft as Sandpaper

“With Dante gone, time seemed to stand still around me; the mornings just as cloudy and dark as the evenings, as if the sun had never decided to rise. There was no wind, like the world was holding its breath along with me, waiting for him to return.”
― Yvonne Woon , Life Eternal

“Sex could be a blissful communion,. But it could also be a weapon, and its absence, sometimes, was required for the establishment of peace.”
― Ann Brashares, Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

“Martin said, "It feels as though part of my self has detached and gone to Amsterdam, where it—she—is waiting for me. Do you know about phantom-limb syndrome?" Julia nodded. "There's pain where she ought to be. It's feeding the other pain, the thing that makes me wash and count and all that. So her absence is stopping me from going to find her. Do you see?”
― Audrey Niffenegger, Her Fearful Symmetry

“Very often I realize that the time people spend apart is as important in maintaining relationships as the time they spend together.”
― Joyce Rachelle

“Always in my love, sudden night.
Always in myself, my enemy.
And always in my always, the same absence.”
― Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Multitudinous Heart: Selected Poems: A Bilingual Edition

“Apparently people commonly died when their loved ones were out of the room. Bathroom break. Quick trip down to the cafeteria for a grilled cheese. It was easier to die if you didn't have family members to worry about at that exact moment.

Easier for the one who was dying, maybe.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, There Is No Long Distance Now

“Oh, Myr," he chokes out. "I hate having to ask this of you..."
He glances towards the car again, and I crouch down in the shadows, hoping it's too dark for him to see whether the window is open or closed. The woman pats his arm, cradling her hand against his elbow.
"You know I'd do anything for you and Hil," she says. I like her voice. It's throaty and rich.
"You'd do anything?" my father repeats numbly. "Even now? After -?"
"Even now," the woman says firmly.”
― Margaret Peterson Haddix, Double Identity

“What? Do you dare smile and suggest for a moment that just because of the Absence between us I cannot make myself vivid to you? Ho! Silly boy! Don't you know that the plainest sort of black ink throbs more than some blood—and the touch of the softest hand is a harsh caress compared to the touch of a reasonably shrewd pen? Here—now, I say—this very moment: Lift this letter of mine to your face, and swear—if you're honestly able to—that you can't smell the rose in my hair!”
― Eleanor Hallowell Abbott, Molly Make-believe

“Rulers are not anointed. They are created by the void of self-mastery.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“Adam Nicolson has written of the 'powerful absence[s]' that remembered landscapes exert upon us, but they exist as powerful presences too, with which we maintain deep and abiding attachments. These, perhaps, are the landscapes in which we live the longest,warped though they are by time and abraded though they are by distance”
― Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot

“Gestern, inmitten des zarten Übergangs vom Morgengrauen zur Abenddämmerung, fühlte ich mich verloren zwischen der greifbaren Umarmung der Realität und dem vergänglichen Reich der Träume und Illusionen. Die Freude an der Erinnerung, einst ein geschätzter Trost, entzog sich nun meinem Zugriff, denn es gab keinen Begleiter, mit dem ich diese wertvollen Erinnerungen teilen konnte. Es war, als hätte die Abwesenheit meiner Geliebten diesen gemeinsamen Erlebnissen die Essenz entzogen und sie hohl und distanziert gemacht.

Der Verlust eines unverzichtbaren Menschen fügt dem Herzen eine tiefe Wunde zu, die nie vollständig heilt. Sie bleiben für immer in den zerbrochenen Kammern unserer Seele präsent, ihre Essenz ist für immer mit unserer eigenen verbunden. Die einfachen Nuancen unseres gemeinsamen Daseins, einst Quellen der Wärme und des Trostes, dienen heute als eindringliche Echos, die vor Schmerz nachhallen.

In der riesigen Fläche, in der sich einst deine Präsenz befand, existiert jetzt eine Leere – eine Leere, die genau nach diesem Bild geformt ist und von keinem anderen gefüllt wird. Ich navigiere ständig durch die Konturen dieser Leere, durchquere tagsüber ihre Tiefen und erliege nachts ihrer allumfassenden Dunkelheit. Es ist eine Kluft, die kunstvoll in die Silhouette deiner Abwesenheit eingraviert ist, eine Leere, die sich allen Versuchen der Schließung widersetzt, denn niemand sonst kann jemals den Raum einnehmen, den du einst in meinem Herzen gehalten hast.”
― Rolf van der Wind

“With each new day, another piece of my past resurfaces, painfully reminding me of what's missing. Life can feel like an endless procession of losses, from start to finish. Your absence cuts through me like a knife, erasing the memory of the once-familiar contours of your face, leaving behind only the ache of your departure.”
― Rolf van der Wind

“Smartass Disciple: Master, where is exactly the edge of this universe ?
Master of Stupidity: Edge is wherever the absence of universal gravity.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“It usually seems best to be absent and slightly missed rather than present but distant.”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“And it seemed to me that I was closer to him during those early months of his absence than at any other time of my life.”
― Chaim Potok, My Name Is Asher Lev

“Return, while night clatters and mirrors open and everything tears inside because of your absence. Everything wants to get on with the wind, the sky. To register a terrible gesture, some way of being without you, an impossible.”
― Alejandra Pizarnik, The Galloping Hour: French Poems

“Distracted I was, by his dark eyes,
his promises that we would have time,
away from all this mayhem,
somewhere secluded and private.
A chance to be lost in each other.

Lured I was, into his desires.
Torn away from this gathering,
this precious, significant time.

Away from my duties for Fleur.”
― Susan L. Marshall, Fleur of Yesterday

“Yet, the light outside is not the same.
It ticks with madness,
expelled by angry bodies.
Natural light has been
outshone by the fire
of angry, wrathful metal.

So we hide, away from war
and the comforting faces
we once shared our lives with.”
― Susan L. Marshall, All the Hope We Carry

“Evil is the absence of good, not the defeat of it.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Your absence is a presence.”
― Meena Kandasamy, Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You

“Silence ain't always revealing, it's deceptive too—it can convey truth by withholding words or mask deception by concealing intentions.
A paradoxical aspect.. where absence speaks volumes, often revealing more than words ever could.”
― Monika Ajay Kaul

“The Musket's Progeny by Stewart Stafford

The musket's progeny, gunpowder's rise,
Heirloom ingot cast in festering dirt,
No scaldy-faced defecator's lies,
Can tarnish gold's immutable worth.

Besmirched, perpetual gleam to my eyes,
Ne'er base, but plundered from thy berth,
Another's private treasure, I cannot despise,
Until thy loan fadeth i' th' afterbirth.

With cloistered secrets to impart,
Our correspondence doth expand,
Let it encompass thy tiny heart,
For when it groweth to understand.

When from distant quays, emotion sails,
My words guide thee in storms and gales.

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

“θέλω τόσα να πω
έρχεται παγωνιά
θέλω να ζεσταθώ
απουσία πλήρης
απουσία παντοτινή
εσύ αιτία αποκλειστική
της καταστροφής”
― NikolinaLekka

“Hiraeth, of course, is a long field with four corners: incompleteness, memory, imagination, and love. It all starts with love.”
― Pamela Petro, The Long Field: Wales and the Presence of Absence, a Memoir