Quotes About Solitude

See for me, it's immediate. Silence is so freaking loud.' This seemed either deep or deeply oxymoronic. I wasn't sure which.

But when you're alone in the world, really alone, you have no choice but to be open to suggestions.

So I left him there alone to watch history repeat the same events retold again and again on his own.

I sat up, sliding them off, and the quiet around me did not, for once, seem empty and vast. Instead, for the first time in a while, it felt like it already was full.

I would have thought this would make me feel better.. getting to be the one to leave and not the one left behind. But it didn't. Not at all.

All I wanted - all I'd ever wanted - was just to get away. To be somewhere small where I could crowd in and feel safe, all four walls pressed around me, no one staring or pointing or yelling.

That was the nice thing about the Spot: you could hear everything, but no one could see you.

All I'd ever thought I wanted was to be left alone. Until I was.

I would have thought this would make me feel better, for once getting to be the one to leave and not the one left behind. But it didn't. Not at all.

Quiet and incredible. I really envy that.

Once, she'd been a pro at decompressing, loved to sit on the back deck of the beach house in one of our splintery Adirondack chairs for hours at a time, staring at the ocean. She never had a book or the paper or anything else to distract her. Just the horizon, but it kept her attention, her gaze unwavering. Maybe it was the absence of thought that she loved about being out there, the world narrowing to just the pounding of the waves as the water moved in and out.

The thing about Whitney, I said, is that she was always really private. So you never knew if anything was wrong with her.

No one knew where I was, not a soul, and while I thought this was what I wanted, I realized, in the quiet of that room, that it was the scariest thing of all

There comes a time in every life when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you'd better learn to know the sound of it. Otherwise you'll never understand what it's saying.

Maybe it was the absence of thought that she loved about being out there, the world narrowing to just the pounding of the waves as the water moved in and out.

Someone who normally moved so slowly, this time, for once, was long gone.

Nobody seemed to understand that the only person I could count on not to bring up my dad, not to feel sorry for me, or make The Face -other than my mother- was me.

That was the thing about being alone, in theory or in principle. Whatever happened—good, bad, or anywhere in between—it was always, if nothing else, all your own.

We all need to lose ourselves in a crowd once in a while.

Children brought up in the company of adults learn better than most the power of solitude.

It is hard to stop loving the ocean. Even after it has left you gasping, salty.

I tilted my head, looked into the distance. I don't even notice you falling in love with me, I practiced to the mirror. I am too preoccupied with what I am doing. Nobody wants to be noticed when they are falling in love. It is a private moment. Whoever was falling in love with me, I reasoned, deserved not to be disturbed.

It is hard to stop loving the ocean, even after it has left you gasping.

I would like to curl up and become a small thing. About this big. And still. Very still. Have you ever become so melancholy, that you wanted to fit in the palm of your beloved's hand? And lie there, for fortnights, or decades, or the length of time between stars? In complete silence?