Quotes About Solitude

What is it about beds at night? During the daytime a bed seems harmless enough. You can take a nap in one on a Saturday afternoon without waking up wondering how much longer you have to live.

A friend is somebody you want to be around when you feel like being by yourself.

I coped by finding a space where I could just…breathe.

I cried for a little while, taking a kind of melancholy delight in my own tears, and then I fell asleep.

Now I lay down on this tree and felt a lonely sadness coming over me in waves. Slow tears ran from my eyes and trickled into my ears. I thought, 'I even cry in a humble, common way, with tears flowing into my ears.' But the humble, common tears had relieved me[...]

Her ticket to freedom lay in her lap. Ever an avid reader, Annie had escaped into books in recent months, when all else failed to calm her. As a friend, a book had advantages over the human variety. It was there whenever she needed it, it vanished as easily, and it never asked questions, expected witty replies, made awkward suggestions, or otherwise overcompensated for its own inability to right the wrongs of the world.

She thought about this. She had analyzed it in depth. When you live alone, travel alone, exist solely on the outskirts of other people's lives, you do have time to wonder why what you want most in life is out of reach. You also have the time to tell yourself that you don't want it at all, though whether you can ever be completely convinced is something else.

Like it was different up here with him now. Less solitary.More complete.The freedom to be and the freedom to enjoy.

He shook his head. "For me." Leaving the bed, he went to the door, picked up the large picnic basket that the girls were holding, then closed the door, leaving them outside. Much as he had needed their help earlier, he didn't want an audience now.

Here in the garden, she found an unexpected peace.

If you want to disappear, Emily, you can do it most anywhere.

I'm not saying that there's anything better than mated bliss at its best, but I'm saying that living alone is as good in its own way. But we haven't quite given ourselves permission to recognize that.

This is your space to do with as you please, a playground where you can create the game with all its rules without compromise—one of the perks of living alone.

When we live alone time and freedom are at the service of our muse in a way that artists in a relationship might envy.

A writer once commented that after he was left alone for long periods of time he felt larger than before

I always felt as if I were on an island. There were people around me, but they weren't really with me.

I simply don't shine in company. Mostly I prefer to retreat with a book.

After long years of solitary meditation, Jenny had come to accept that, for her, magic was a depth and a stillness rather than the moving brilliance that it was for the great.

There is a need to find and sing our own song, to stretch our limbs and shake them in a dance so wild that nothing can roost there, that stirs the yearning for solitary voyage.

Perhaps long spaghetti is the kind of thing that ought to be eaten quite alone with nobody to watch one's struggles.

Oh, this coming back to an empty house,' Rupert thought, when he had seen her safely up to her door. People - though perhaps it was only women - seemed to make so much of it. As if life itself were not as empty as the house one was coming back to.

If it is true that men only want one thing, Jane asked herself, is it perhaps just to be left to themselves with their soap animals or some other harmless little trifle?

The day comes in the life of every single man living alone when he must give a dinner party, however unpretentious, and that day had now arrived for Rupert Stonebird.

Letty allowed her to ramble on while she looked around the wood, remembering its autumn carpet of beech leaves and wondering if it could be the kind of place to lie down in and prepare for death when life became too much to be endured.