Quotes About Solitude

From the outside, it wasn't much. But to her it was everything she needed. A place to retreat and lick her wounds. Somewhere she didn't have to pretend. Sanctuary.

Sometimes, Blister was thinking, the only person in the world she could really count on was herself, and that was not enough.

I am tired of being a person. Not just tired of being the person I was, but any person at all. I like watching people, but I don't like talking to them, dealing with them, pleasing them, or offending them. I am tired.

The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world 'picturesque.

It's not 'natural' to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little—have few verbal means. Eloquence—thinking in words—is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality.

Each of us carries a room within ourselves, waiting to be furnished and peopled, and if you listen closely, you may need to silence everything in your own room, you can hear the sounds of that other room inside your head.

Alone, alone. I am alone – I ache … Yet for the first time, despite all the anguish and the reality problems, I'm here. I feel tranquil, whole, ADULT.

It is intolerable to have one's sufferings twinned with anybody else's.

Somewhere, some place inside myself, I am detached. I have always been detached (in part). Always.

You have to create your own space which has a lot of silence in it and a lot of books.

I am not myself with people [...] but am I myself when alone? That seems unlikely, too.

Regenerative experiences: Plunge into the sea. The sun. An old city. Silence.

Jerking off the universe is perhaps what all philosophy, all abstract thought is about: an intense, and not very sociable pleasure, which has to be repeated again and again.

The Cavaliere has retired to his study and reads, trying not to think about what is going on around him -- one of the principal uses of a book.

I know I'm not myself with people, […] But am I myself when alone? That seems unlikely, too.

Up to a point, the weight and seriousness of such photographs survive better in a book, where one can look privately, linger over the pictures, without talking. Still, at some moment the book will be closed. The strong emotion will become a transient one.

Pavese's continual prayers for the strength to lead a life of rigorous seclusion and solitude ("The only heroic rule is to be alone, alone, alone") are entirely of a piece with his repeated complaints about his inability to feel.

If I'm all alone, then the standard for sanity is up to me entirely.

You're never alone when you're reading a book

Just my luck, she thought. Here I am in the middle of nowhere, and Easy Rider comes to my rescue.

The chilly blue of loneliness was a shadow on snow. The

loved coming here. It always felt so…safe. I was allowed to read any book I wanted. No one interrupted me, or if they did, it was done gently and with respect. I always wished the rest of the world would be run like a library.

he'd formed the idea that she was a solitary sort, not one to seek company when a good book lay at hand.

Having a Mac all to himself was pretty amazing.