Quotes About Solitude

It was the work of the quiet mountains, this torrent of purity at my feet.

Writing is such a singular and lonely occupation. And it's interesting; all of the work that you create is so singular.

In the original novel [ Anthem], the story unfolds in the mind of a single character. Maybe that's why Ayn Rand called the work a poem.

Writing is a very lonely occupation. To write you need to concentrate, to concentrate you need to lock yourself away. No distractions; you want your stream of thought uninterrupted.

When it comes to the point where you occasionally look forward to being in prison on the basis that you might be able to spend a day reading a book, the realization dawns that perhaps the situation has become a little more stressful than you would like.

I talk to myself quite a lot, and when things get stressful, I just tell myself to breathe.

I don't want to be bothered when I'm stretching. I need to focus.

As an only child you don't have many people to play with, and mum was strict about not mixing with kids on the street, so I played by myself.

If you're an only child, you spend a lot of time by yourself, and you develop a strong ability to entertain yourself, to conjure up fantasy.

The strong man is strongest when alone.

When I was alone, I lived on eggplant, the stove top cook's strongest ally. I fried it and stewed it, and ate it crisp and sludgy, hot and cold. It was cheap and filling and was delicious in all manner of strange combinations. If any was left over, I ate it cold the next day on bread.

I strongly believe that privacy is one of the biggest luxuries one can have in life - to have your own private world and not be invaded by the outside.

I grew up completely alone but with all the comforts of knowing I had a cushioning family structure around me - and yet I could free myself from it.

Many of my characters struggle with loneliness, that is fair to say.

I have seen in my life, I have struggled so much. I did not get support from anyone.

You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it's always just one person encountering the book, it's not an audience, it's one to one.

France was very opposite of the show-business experience I'd been living; I was anonymous and alone. I wore no makeup, wore the same clothes every day. And I wrote and wrote and wrote.

What I love about New York is that everyone is in their own world. It's the opposite of L.A. - there, everyone is looking outside of themselves to see who's next to them. What's great about New York is that you get to be anonymous.

I was a real serious kid, real intense, and there were a lot of things that I was doing by myself I took seriously, like organizing little pieces of paper, cutting out things from magazines, and filing them away.

There was no one near to confuse me, so I was forced to become original.

We lived on isolated farms and ranches, far from anybody, and when I was young I knew very few other kids, so I lived to a great extent in my imagination.

When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that.

I understand the feelings of being the outcast and the loner.

I had never been much for outdoor activities.