Quotes About Solitude

He carries books everywhere he goes so he won't have to be bored by people.

Well, maybe that was fate. Maybe she was meant to be alone. She was a runner, and wasn't that the habit of a person who preferred to be on her own?

In doing so, he understood who he was. In that moment, in his aunt's greenhouse, he felt more alone than ever.

She liked to disappear, even when she was in the same room as other people. It was a talent, as it was a curse. There was something that come between Emily and other people, a white linen curtain, hazy. It made the world quieter and farther away, although occasionally she could see through to the other side.

Sometimes they would sit in the parlor together, both reading – in entirely separate worlds, to be sure, but joined somehow.

I'd lived my whole life without a friend. I'd just have to remember how to do that again.

He had felt the same sort of aloneness once again when Maria told him to leave;

I wasn't good company, that was true, and people avoided me, but that was alright.

It was then that Nathaniel truly began to appreciate the years he had spent alone in his room, the distance from other people that had given him the ability to observe and to feel what another might had also made him a writer.

When you have lost your mother you have lost the world. You can sit in the garden and see nothing at all, not the woman on the garden bench watching over you, not the boy who refuses to leave you, even when you tell him to go. Your grief won't go away; it's not a door you can close, or a book you can put back on the shelf, or a kiss you can give back once it is given. This is the way the world is now. Keep the worst things to yourself, like a bone in your throat.

She had even considered that poetry might be her calling. She had something inside her no one understood, that much was certain, and that sort of isolation often led to a poet's life.

she wanted to sit in the dark and whisper all of her fears into an ear which would hold every word like a silver shell.

Snow made him feel like crying sometimes-just the first flakes, the purest stuff.

I had made the decision to stick with life as I knew it, which meant I was alone. But at least I wasn't dumped or betrayed.

It's easy to keep to yourself if you hang back and always sit in the last row and slip around corners as if you were a ghost.

It was not about the sea or the sand, but burying her feet there had seemed to cure what had worried her...

He pulled the door closed and the wind became just the slightest rush of air against the rolled-up windows. There was suddenly a pleasant warmth. Their voices, suddenly, seemed rich and sure now that they could speak quietly, now that their words were no longer scattered by the buffeting wind.

Our Mary Rose," he said, and kissed her head, as if he were bidding her a fond farewell. She laughed. There could be worse lives than this lonely one. There could be life married to someone like George.

Not a soul," Mary Keane said to her husband, the wind lifting her words, tossing them gently back over her shoulder, the way it moved the colorful tails of the scarf she had tied under her chin. In her arms she had bundled a wool blanket and a

I loved taking off. In my own house, I seemed to be often looking for a place to hide - sometimes from the children but more often from the jobs to be done and the phone ringing and the sociability of the neighborhood. I wanted to hide so that I could get busy at my real work, which was a sort of wooing of distant parts of myself.

This is the way you look at the poorest details of the world resurfaced, after you've been driving for a long time -- you feel their singleness and precise location and the forlorn coincidence of you being there to see them.

I was happy in the library. Walls of printed pages, evidence of so many created worlds--this was a comfort to me.

I loved taking off. In my own house, I seemed to be often looking for a place to hide--sometimes from the children but more often from the jobs to be done and the phone ringing and the sociability of the neighborhood. I wanted to hide so that I could get busy at my real work, which was a sort of wooing of distant parts of myself. I lived in a state of siege, always losing just what I wanted to hold on to[...] It was being a watcher that did it. A watcher, not a keeper.

I would have seen flaws in this, later in my life. I would have felt the impatience, even suspicion, a woman can feel towards a man who lacks a motive. Who has only friendship to offer and offers that so easily and bountifully that even if it is rejected he can move along as buoyantly as ever. Here was no solitary fellow hoping to hook up with a girl. Even I could see that, inexperienced as I was. Just a person who took comfort in the moment and in a sort of reasonable façade of life.