Wistful Quotes

“This is what I want. I want people to take care of me. I want them to force comfort upon me. I want the soft-pillow feeling that I associate with memories of being ill when I was younger, soft pillows and fresh linens and satin-edged blankets and hot chocolate. It's not so much the comfort itself as knowing there's someone who wants to take care of you.”
― Franny Billingsley, Chime

“All these years I've had a story in my mind, the story about us that never really existed. And because of that story, I've kept you framed up on the wall in a little box of nostalgic moonlight.”
― Cathleen Schine, The Love Letter

“some winters
will never melt

some summers
will never freeze

and some things will only
... live in poems.”
― Sanober Khan, Turquoise Silence

“In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognise such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one's life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one's relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“Funny, isn't it? We hear the same name and while they see dark, I see light.”
― Nadia Hashimi, The Pearl That Broke Its Shell

“we always knew
that good times came
with termination contracts
even if we weren't quite ready
to sign it.”
― Sanober Khan, Turquoise Silence

“I’d like to be the moon in your sky.”
― Debasish Mridha

“That you should not be here when something we've both wanted happens is no new thing for me. Today too, as always, you're not here.”
― Sachin Kundalkar, Cobalt Blue

“I'm rambling again. Wandering off the point. But this is the true story of my wasted life...”
― Mordecai Richler

“Everyone's thought that: maybe even if, maybe we still could, maybe small bits of precious things can be salvaged. No one with cop-on thinks it after the first try. But her voice, quiet and sad, shimmering the air into those pearly colors: for a second I believed it, all over again.”
― Tana French, The Secret Place

“Eve was happy for her bestie. She just wished she had a guy who would look at her the way Seth looked at her friend, eyes all starry.
No, that wasn't it. Or it wasn't completely it. Eve knew there were guys at school who liked her and would give her the Seth-look if she gave them the opportunity. But she didn't want the look from any of those guys. She wanted the look she could give the look back to. She wanted to find a guy she could all-out love who would all-out love her back.”
― Amy Meredith, Fever

“I was so utterly content that I was slightly wistful. It was the feeling I got when I was about to finish a really great book. I was nostalgic for this moment even as I was still in it.”
― Noelle Hancock

“[T]hey reached the dwelling of Governor Bellingham...now moss-grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy at heart with the many sorrowful or joyful occurrences, remembered or forgotten, that have happened, and passed away, within their dusky chambers. Then, however, there was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human habitation into which death had never entered.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“Ymmärräthän... kun on oikein surullinen, on ihana katsella auringonlaskuja.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Once upon a time I knew his face by heart. I had him memorized.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“You are in my mind always," you say consolingly.
But we don't live inside our minds.
We live inside our lives.”
― Gerry Gomez-Pearlberg

“What, and end up like you? Wistfully recalling a lover from long ago? Please.”
― Elizabeth Carlton, The Royal Rogue

“No, I’m not generally okay with exploding,” she told him. He raised an eyebrow. “Few are,” he said wistfully, as if he had personal experience in the matter.”
― Carrie Ryan, The Map to Everywhere

“Not even memory could outlive him.”
― Mario Escobar

“Breathing, increasingly sparkling, swathed in the gentle sunlight. The pretty scene was brimming with life, but my soul was pining for the desolate streets of winter and for that river at dawn. I wished my heart would break and get it over with.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“It was not something she cared for, relying on anyone else, hoping she got what she wanted.”
― Kevin Wilson, Run for the Hills: A Novel