Quotes About Solitude

the combo gave him gas, but the taste was unparalleled, and Arnold lived alone, except for the chickens and his yellow Lab, so the gas wasn't a critical problem, though the dog sometimes got watery eyes.

He believes he's the only real soul in an ocean of puppets.

for a few moments, and he went inside. Halfway down the hall and around a corner, he

Let's still not ever do this again, Wilson said to himself. Agreed, himself said back.

He liked living simply. And he liked living alone. He had grown to dislike physical affection. It was intrusive, and it bullied his self esteem, because he wasn't good at it.

She was tired of being afraid, so impossibly weary of her own fears that a part of her wanted to sit on the quite beach forever. If she sat in the sand forever,she wouldn't have to face the troubles that often seemed to define her life. As a tear descended her cheek, she wiped it away, turning toward the sea.

Sometimes when she was alone, and she knew she was alone, she permitted her mind to play in a garden, and she smiled.

I ain't got no people. I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone. That ain't no good. They don't have no fun. After a long time they get mean. They get wantin' to fight all the time. . . 'Course Lennie's a God damn nuisance most of the time, but you get used to goin' around with a guy an' you can't get rid of him.

Nearly everybody has his box of secret pain, shared with no one.

Sometimes in the summer evenings they walked up the hill to watch the afterglow clinging to the tops of the western mountains and to feel the breeze drawn into the valley by the rising day-heated air. Usually they stood silently for a while and breathed in peacefulness. Since both were shy they never talked about themselves. Neither knew about the other at all.

A guy sets alone out here at night, maybe readin' books or thinkin' or stuff like that. Sometimes he gets thinkin', an' he got nothing to tell him what's so an' what ain't so. Maybe if he sees somethin', he don't know whether it's right or not. He can't turn to some other guy and ast him if he sees it too. He can't tell. He got nothing to measure by.

One who was born by the ocean or has associated with it cannot ever be quite content away from it for very long

There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity. It's not an uncommon disease. But it's nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.

They walked side by side along the dark beach toward Monterey, where the lights hung, necklace above necklace against the hill. The sand dunes crouched along the back of the beach like tired hounds, resting: and the waves gently practiced at striking, and hissed a little. The night was cold and aloof, and its warm life was withdrawn, so that it was full of bitter warnings to man that he is alone in the world, and alone among his fellows; that he has no comfort owing him from anywhere.

He lived in a strange, silent house and looked out of it through calm eyes. He was a stranger to all the world, but he was not lonely.

There seemed to be no cure for loneliness save only being alone.

Relationship Time to Aloneness. And I remember about that. Having a companion fixes you in time and that the present, but when the quality of aloneness settles down, past, present, and future all flow together. A memory, a present event, and a forecast all equally present.

The one-eyed man watched them go, and then he went through the iron shed to his shack behind. It was dark inside. He felt his way to the mattress on the floor, and he stretched out and cried in his bed, and the cars whizzing by on the highway only strengthened the walls of his loneliness.

Everyone has to be an orphan some time.

Please try not to need me. That's the worst bait of all to a lonely man.

Nearly everyone has had a box of secret pain, shared with no one.

Unless a writer's capable of solitude, he should leave books alone and go into the theater.

Her self was an island.

He stopped, feeling lonely in his long speech.