Quotes About Solitude

One of the many reasons why gardens are increasingly precious to us in this day and age is that they help us to escape from the tyranny of speed. Our skies are streaked with jets, our roads have turned to race-tracks, and in the cities the crowds rush to and fro as though the devil were at their heels. But as soon as we open the garden gate, Time seems almost to stand still, slowing down to the gentle ticking of the Clock of the Universe.

Beverly Barton

Even if all I did was stay away... it's still the best thing I ever did in my life.

On the fourth night, just as I was facing the dismal prospect of finishing my only book and thereafter having nothing to do in the evenings but lie in the half light and listen to Katz snore, I was delighted, thrilled, sublimely gratified to find that some earlier user had left a Graham Greene paperback. If there's one thing the AT teaches, it is low level ecstasy, something we can all do with more of in our lives

the average asteroid actually will be about one and a half million kilometres from its nearest neighbour.

And thus I was to be found, in the first week of June, standing on the banks of the Shenandoah again, in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, blinking at a grey sky and trying to pretend that with all my heart this was where I wanted to be.

small rise. And then we were alone with our packs in an

I look at Danny and Carolyn, the only other people in the room. It's time for me to go, alone and off the record. For years I've been constantly going, but never alone and never off the record. The Secret Service takes every step with me, and at least one aide is almost always there, even when I'm on vacation. A record is kept of where I am every hour.

The Power of One is a slogan--not a goal.

I think nighttime is dark so you can imagine your fears with less distraction.

I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood.

You know the parlor trick. wrap your arms around your own body and from the back it looks like someone is embracing you her hands grasping your shirt her fingernails teasing your neck from the front it is another story you never looked so alone your crossed elbows and screwy grin you could be waiting for a tailor to fit you with a straight jacket one that would hold you really tight.

perhaps the answer is simply one: one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet, a small jazz combo working in the background. She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over to glance at his watch because she has been dancing forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.

one burst after another as my wife turned in her sleep. I was a single monkey trying to type the opening lines of my Hamlet

And when my heart is beating too rapidly in the dark, I will go downstairs in a robe, open it up to a blank page, and try to settle on the blue lines whatever it is that seems to be the matter.

And there is the silence of this morning which I have broken with my pen… — Billy Collins, from "Silence," The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems . (Random House August 10, 2011) Originally published 2005.

When there's nothing left to lose, and nothing else to prove, I'll be dancing with myself

It doesn't matter about money; having it, not having it. Or having clothes, or not having them. You're still left alone with yourself in the end.

Like a boxer in a title fight, you have to walk in that ring alone.

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit quiet in a room alone.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

All of human unhappiness comes from one single thing: not knowing how to remain at rest in a room.