Quotes About Solitude

Sometimes you go for weeks without writing successfully, and you don't feel like a writer anymore. When friends ask me how my week was or how I'm doing, I think back on it, and I've just been by myself. Like, I'm just a sketch.

It's interesting that reading, like listening to podcasts, is a lone pursuit, one where we keep our mouths shut and let someone else do the talking. Where we absorb rather than emit. By occasionally isolating ourselves, we can more successfully, more generously, socialise.

It sucks to not have any privacy.

To write, I think one must sit in one place and be bored. Boredom is a very good state for writers to be. Things cook away in your head when you're bored, and suddenly one day, you have a book or a germ of a book.

I have developed a very strong partiality for the dead: they don't talk back, they don't sue, and they don't have angry relatives.

I am the only person here who is enjoying this, and I get the money; they pay and have to suffer.

I walk slowly into myself, through a forest of empty suits of armor.

A writer's life suits me. It's fairly, well, other people might think it was actually rather dull, but that's fine because I feel that my imagination is enough to kind of keep me happy.

Honestly, my entire childhood could be summed up with one word: Reader. I was always hunched over a book; in fact, I was the only kid in the world who got paler in the summer, because I'd sneak down into our cool, dank cellar and sit alone with a book for hours.

And if you don't believe the sun will rise, stand alone and greet the coming night in the last remaining light.

All I need for a perfect holiday is sun and some peace and quiet. Those make for perfect book-writing conditions.

There was a time I thought I'd never see the sun again.

I feel extraordinarily peaceful when I'm watching the sun set.

I've been able to carve out spaces for myself. At Sundance, I'm in the mountains - my property is private. I get on a horse and ride for three, four hours. Sometimes five. I get lost. But when I'm in, I'm in.

I usually stay in on Sunday nights. I'm not much of a party person.

I might have sung party numbers, but I love to party alone.

I don't much care for the sunlight or bright colours of any kind.

I've never been a sunny personality. I've never been outgoing. I'm a solitary person.

I believe that looking at the sunset or the city's landscape helps me think.

Embrace your solitude and love it. Endure the pain it causes, and try to sing out with it. For those near to you are distant...

The necessary thing is after all but this; solitude, great inner solitude. Going into oneself for hours meeting no one - this one must be able to attain.

But your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.

It is always what I have already said: always the wish that you may find patience enough in yourself to endure, and simplicity enough to believe; that you may acquire more and more confidence in that which is difficult, and in your solitude among others. And for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is right, in any case.

I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them. There I can find, as in old letters, the days of my life, already lived, and held like a legend, and understood.