Quotes from Doris Grumbach

The reason that extended solitude seemed so hard to endure was not that we missed others but that we began to wonder if we ourselves were present, because for so long our existence depended upon assurances from them.

one keeps one's friends better when one is alone. The corollary to this is that one loses one's friends, slowly, when one sees them too often or when they visit for too long a time.

Talk uses up ideas. ... Once I have spoken them aloud, they are lost to me, dissipated into the noisy air like smoke. Only if I bury them, like bulbs, in the rich soil of silence do they grow.

What others regard as retreat from them or rejection of them is not those things at all but instead a breeding ground for greater friendship, a culture for deeper involvement, eventually, with them.