Quotes About Solitude

People think I'm not polite. But, what I have to say to people seems so unnecessary. I can't be forced. I'd rather just be what I feel. Even when I sing I try to imagine I'm all alone, there's nobody out there listening. I play with the notes, with the feeling. Each time the song is different for me.

I try to go unnoticed. I don't watch the news or read what they say. I try to stay on the sidelines.

For me, if I didn't have reading I'd go absolutely crazy. It really helps me to unplug from the whole world, and keep my sanity, and be able to fill my time with something other than technology.

'One Hundred Years of Solitude' is a masterpiece because it is an episodic novel that has a rigorous form - an unprecedented combination. From the very beginning we know the town of Macondo will endure only a century, so there is a limit to the length of the narrative.

It is not altogether shyness that now makes me unsuccessful in company. Sometimes it is a state of mind that is three parts meditation, that will not free the thoughts until their attendant trains are prepared to follow them.

I want to be alone and work until the day my heads hits the drawing table and I'm dead. Kaput. I feel very much like I want to be with my brother and sister again. They're nowhere. I know they're nowhere and they don't exist, but if nowhere means that's where they are, that's where I want to be.

It was all so far away - there was quiet and an untouched feel to the country and I could work as I pleased.

I was the only Black person on the set. It was unusual for me to be in a circumstance in which every move I made was tantamount to representation of 18 million people.

I love how it feels to unwind by the ocean.

Im a night owl so I tend to do a lot of my disconnecting past midnight. I love the feeling when the whole world has shut down for the day Im left to think and unwind without any interruptions.

The most luxurious thing to me is having an hour of my day, which rarely happens, to listen to my iPod and sit on my couch. That's how I unwind.

The songs, if I write alone in a room, end up being a little more quiet, a little more subdued. If I play with other musicians or percussive instruments, it might end up being a little more upbeat.

We used to live in this little house where the whole of the upper floor was used for chickens. It was four days' walk to the nearest road.

When I needed to think or was really upset, generally I climbed a tree.

Some of my closest friends know that when I worry about something or when I'm upset, I close myself off and stay in my room. I watch movies and I don't get out of bed.

If nobody needs me - and usually, these days, they don't - I'll fall asleep until around midnight. Then I go upstairs and work until 4 A.M., and that's when I go back to bed for good. It suits me.

I grew up in a super small town in upstate New York; my nearest neighbour was really far away.

I'm not an urban person.

We need above all, I think, a certain remoteness from urban confusion.

It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house.

Men find it more difficult than women to be alone. They function better with someone in their lives. Being married, they are rooted, so they feel safe to go and do what they want to do.

The solution to any problem -work, love, money, whatever -is to go fishing, and the worse the problem, the longer the trip should be.

I hold the most archaic values on earth ... the fertility of the soul, the magic of the animals, the power-vision in solitude.... the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe.

The good thing about working alone is I get a lot done and I can experiment more. The bad thing is I miss out on the gregarious, social way that most musicians work.