Quotes About Solitude

with a mind so occupied, she might have forgotten where she was. Reflection must be reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was alone, she gave way to it as the greatest relief; and not a day went by without a solitary walk, in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant recollections.

it is singularity which often makes the worst part of our suffering, as

I prefer to be unsociable and taciturn

While well, and happy, and properly attended to, she had great good humour and excellent spirits; but any indisposition sunk her completely. She had no resources for solitude; and inheriting a considerable share of the Elliot self-importance, was very prone to add to every other distress that of fancying herself neglected and ill-used.

How healing it was to be back at Gombe again, and by myself with the chimpanzees and their forest. I had left the busy, materialistic world so full of greed and selfishness and, for a little while, could feel myself, as in the early days, a part of nature. I felt very much in tune with the chimpanzees, for I was spending time with them not to observe, but simple because I needed their company, undemanding and free of pity.

She is too old to share her space with people she does not know, too set in her ways to share her space even with people she does.

Most of the time, when I'm facing an evening on my own, I am absolutely fine. If anything, I relish that alone time, when my daughter is with her father; the luxury of eating whatever I want to eat, the relief at not having to provide

There is nothing like lying down to bawl and choke, and then rolling over so the tears can drip out of your ears and settling in for a long sleep.

During these long periods of solitary contemplation in a setting of such dramatically haunting beauty, I found myself overcome by waves of loneliness.

I live in the desert of the heart. I can't love the whole damned world.

And she had gone off from her husband to live by herself with the priests, had she not? Does a man, seeing a trinket lying before him in the grass, fail to pick it up?

After he got back to his apartment that evening, Arthur remembered how completely he'd thought he'd solved the problem of his own childhood once he'd claimed Lillian and enveloped her in his dream--no one idle, no one beset by solitude, everyone laughing. The problem he had not solved, or even known existed, was how quickly it passed, every joke, every embrace, every babyhood and childhood, every moment of thinking that he had things figured out for good.

There were no toys under the bed--that wasn't why he liked it. Why he liked it was that there wasn't anything under the bed--no chickens, no Joey, no Eloise, no sheep, no nos. He could lie under the bed and not be told anything at all.

dark, wet sides of the well dropped maybe

He had accepted that if you were a bookish person the events in your life took place in your head.

The Arctic is the landscape of the self, of the naked soul. It is what the inner landscape looks like when everything beyond the self has been discarded.

fierce lonely

Kenneth's shadow is a thin ghost on the quay. But there are thousands and thousands of miles inside him.

He wishes to be far away, either at sea or on the shore. In between, he realizes, is the most difficult of all places to be.

The hard bed, the stool beside it, the stark cross on the wall, each cast shadows. Only the man in the bed seemed shadowless. He was the stillest thing in the room.

I am not menopausal. I just wanted half an hour alone. Is that too much to ask? A crappy half hour!

I don't want a new man. I'll be dead someday, my mother said. And then what? You'll wish you had someone. I have a hamster.

Throwing up is not a group activity

Her concept of paradise was something more immediate: a book and a blanket beneath a tree, where she might read in peace.