Quotes About Solitude

Thomas Merton. A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals, Thomas Merton, Jonathan Montaldo. HarperCollins: New York

When you're feeling lonely and no one is around Remember to look inside yourself and a best friend will be found

I've narrowed it down to nobody

It was as if pain were a room he had entered and the door had been locked behind him.

Anyone out without the excuse of a dog should be handcuffed and searched for loneliness.

In my solitude I have seen things very clearly That were not true —Antonio Machado, 1983

So I just live with my insomnia. I do crossword puzzles, or wander out to the music room and fool around on the piano, or read. Those late hours when the world is completely still, when the only sound is the rustle of the air in the vents and the wind visiting the trees outside, when the darkness is tucked tight around the house and you feel as life itself the movements of your own consciousness-these are wonderful hours to read. There is no interruption.

Some people just aren't fit for human company."... "And some people just don't want it.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you're forced back on your own imagination.

The snow lay deep and undisturbed beneath the silver light of a dawning sky.

The sun rises low - if it rises at all - and hovers close to the horizon, barely skirting the hilltops before losing heart and sinking once more into the icy abyss of night.

It sometimes takes a state of solitude to bring to mind the real power of companionship.

When you're alone is when you can count your friends.

When you sit alone and think out your thoughts … then that is your loudest cry!

It has taken me a lot of years, but I find silence is sometimes the best answer.

While amidst the crowd and seeking quieteness in another zone you can still get away from them by homing in on matters within.

And Goodness knows The Wicked's lives are lonely Goodness knows The Wicked die alone

He's still half with usConniving slyly, yet he knows he's goneInto that cellar where they'll never find him,Happy to be alone, his last work done,Word freed from world, into a different wood.

There is a wilderness we walk alone However well-companioned

We need books...because we are all, in the private kingdoms of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend.

When I was a kid, my mom used to run the vacuum cleaner, and the noise would bother me so much that I would run into the woods to calm down. I feel like that vacuum cleaner has been on since I moved to New York City.

I've performed solo for 20 years now, but I don't do much of it, because if you only play alone, you go crazy and out of tune and play foolish music.

Nobody was playing the soprano saxophone and certainly nobody was trying to do anything with it. So I was all alone. I didn't know that at first.

I think I meant that, given the circumstances of my childhood, I had the illusion that it's easier to be alone. To have your relationships be casual and also to pose as a solitary person, because it was more romantic. You know, I was raised on the idea of the ramblin' man and the loner.