Quotes About Solitude

Once more I realize acutely that solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people (all naturally solitary people must feel this) precludes awareness of one's self, so after a while the self no longer knows that it exists.

O, in this single hour I live, All of myself and do not move. I, the pursued, who madly ran, Stand still, stand still and stop the sun!

When it comes to the important things one is always alone.

When I talk about solitude I am really talking also about making space for that intense, hungry face at the window, starved cat, starved person.

We are one, the house and I, and I am happy to be alone-- time to think, time to be. This kind of open-ended time is the only luxury that really counts and I feel stupendously rich to have it.

I live alone, perhaps for no good reason, for the reason that I am an impossible creature, set apart by a temperament I have never learned to use as it could be used, thrown off by a word, a glance, a rainy day, or one drink too many.

It occurs to me that boredom and panic are the two devils the solitary must combat. When I lay down this afternoon, I could not rest and finally got up because I was in a sweat of panic, panic for no definable reason, a panic of solitude, I presume.

Every person needs to take one day away.  A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future.  Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence.  Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.  Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.

But think of it this way, if people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you.

Early mornings were given over to Bartok and Schoenberg. Midmorning I treated myself to the vocals of Billy Eckstine, Billie Holiday, Nat Cole, Louis Jordan and Bull Moose Jackson. A piroshki from the Russian delicatessen next door was lunch and then the giants of bebop flipped through the air. Charlie Parker and Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan and Al Haig and Howard McGhee. Blues belonged to late afternoons and the singers' lyrics of lost love spoke to my solitude.

then go to my room where solitude gaped whale-jawed wide to swallow me entire.

Autopsy read: dead of acute peoplelessness.

Fall gently, snowflakes Cover me with white Cold icy kisses and Let me rest tonight.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the spaces between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. In my rented room (cooking privileges down the hall), I would play a record, then put my arms around the shoulder of the song. As we danced, glued together, I would nuzzle into its neck, kissing the skin, and rubbing its cheek with my own.

she'd find a hidden meaning in every pair of pants, then hurry home to be alone and write about romance

The world had ended, and I was the only person who knew it. People walked along the streets as if the pavements hadn't all crumbled beneath their feet.

When you see me sitting quietly, Like a sack left on the shelf, Don't think I need your chattering. I'm listening to myself. Hold!

Only me. It had always only been me. I'd just needed to believe in her. In me.

But it's pretty clear to me by now that Sarah just likes to talk to hear the sound of her own voice, so I let her go on, since she has no one else to talk to

She frowned at him. 'You are in love with solitude.' 'Is there a better cure for the world than solitude?

Relius lay alone with his thoughts. What kind of man, he wondered, referred to himself as "safely dead"?

Your Majesty! Hilarion was close to begging. Everyone is waiting. Tell them I died. Your Majesty... Died, Hilarion. In the night, peacefully. Why would I do that? Because then you could all go away and leave me alone.

If there's anything I've learned in twenty-five years, it's that the more honest you are about what you think, the more you sit in solitude with your own thoughts.

To have pain is to have certainty; to hear about pain is to have doubt." The same was true of all my symptoms, none of which could be seen. In those months I was lonely in a way I never had been before. I could taste the solitude of the human body like brine in my mouth, a taste that never left me. •