Quotes from Anneli Rufus

We cannot accept what would normally be joy because we believe we do not deserve it. Thus whatever looks like joy in our lives cannot really be joy but rather something wicked resembling

We cannot accept what would normally be joy because we believe we do not deserve it. Thus whatever looks like joy in our lives cannot really be joy but rather something wicked resembling it.

Our true selves, the selves from our "times before," are waiting for us. Where to find them? In the places and activities that make us hate ourselves the least. Do you hate yourself less than usual while mountain-climbing, singing, studying, discussing lab results, visiting France? Wherever you hate yourself less is where your true self lives, where he or she feels safe to work and play.

The loner who looks fabulous is one of the most vulnerable loners of all.

We do not require company. In varying degrees, it bores us, drains us, makes our eyes glaze over. Overcomes us like a steamroller. Of course, the rest of the world doesn't understand.

Socializing is as exhausting as giving blood. People assume we loners are misanthropes, just sitting thinking, 'Oh, people are such a bunch of assholes,' but it's really not like that. We just have a smaller tolerance for what it takes to be with others. It means having to perform. I get so tired of communicating.

We care. We feel. We think. We do not always miss the absent one. We cannot always come when called. Being friends with a loner requires patience and the wisdom that distance does not mean dislike.

The whole world is a personality cult.

Writing is done alone. People do not talk about the things they do alone.

After what others would call a fun day out together, we feel as if we have been at the Red Cross, donating blood.

Not that I was incapable of friendship. 'Don't be shy', the teachers coaxed. I was not shy, only extremely choosy. And Denise shone like a diamond. If you had to ask me to define paradise, I would have said a desert island which Denise could visit, on a boat.

And as experienced as I am, it still summons an act of bravery from me, and I like that. I like the idea of setting an example - proving that it is acceptable to be alone in a public place where everyone else is in groups, and to just be sitting there eating, not having to be engrossed in anything else.

Loners live among the mob, so the mob mistakes us for its own, presuming and assuming. When the mob gets too close, the truth is revealed. Running or walking away, chased or free, any which way, we tell the mob in effect I don't need you.

Loners can play well with others-the right others

I don't hate my relatives or those whose names fill my address book. But I do not want to have lunch with any of them. It is not personal. I am not angry. Nor is this about being afraid. I am not shy. I do not have terrible manners. Do birds hate lips? Do Fijians detest snowplows? Being a loner is not about hate, but need: We need what others dread. We dread what others need.

People say the desert is desolate. Yet for me it's very much alive, full of surprises. As soon as I see those wide-open spaces, I can breathe

They say isolation drives you crazy. Sure it does-when you can't get enough of it.

America trembles in fear of loners, yet Charles Manson is a social butterfly.

Some of us have spent our whole lives committing suicide. And some of us survived.

Some in the outside world might call our traumas trivial. Were you gang-raped? Sold into slavery? Imprisoned in a concentration camp? Did you accidentally tweet a naked picture of yourself to twenty million strangers? No? Then stop whining! They would not understand that it is possible to be annihilated by a smirk, a scowl, an empty threat.

The mob thinks we are maladjusted. Of course we are adjusted just fine, not to their frequency. They take it personally.

Is socializing all that great? Riots are socializing. Arguably, more damage is done and time wasted in company with others than alone.

Alone, we are alive.

And yet what has been learned can be unlearned.