Quotes About Solitude

When left alone with her, I ignored her and kept my eyes on my book, though I confess I turned over more pages than I read.

Me and my needs were driving my mother away. Me and my needs retreated to my closet, disappeared into fairy tales. I started making up a world where my needs wouldn´t exist at all.

When we believe ourselves to be alone, we have no responsibility to this world and are answerable to no one.

If a woman stands in a kitchen rubbing her eyes and pouring coffee with no one there to see her, does she exist? I

I began to measure things in absence instead of presence.

The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incubator of the spirit.

For every five well-adjusted and smoothly functioning Americans, there are two who never had the chance to discover themselves. It may well be because they have never been alone with themselves.

The great omission in American life is solitude. . . that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incinerator of the spirit.

Pale as the moon I lie in fruitless fantasy.

communication occurs despite the solitary nature of the reading act—

So much of a child's life is lived for others. . . . All the reading I did as a child, behind closed doors, sitting on the bed while the darkness fell around me, was an act of reclamation. This and only this I did for myself. This was the way to make my life my own.

When my mathematician husband is bored at parties, he sits quietly in a corner and does equations in his head. Only I know that he is no longer in the room. I can tell by his eyes and the contented look on his face.

He may not answer me at first, but that is no matter. I have someone to talk to, at last! My words will be like sunshine and air. My voice will rain down on him, and then we shall see what glorious orchid may blossom from this shy, unwanted Weed.

The pain of being alone is completely out of this world, isn't it? I don't know why, but I understand your feelings so much, it actually hurts.

Man braucht nur eine Insel Allein im weiten Meer. Man braucht nur einen Menschen, den aber braucht man sehr.

Ob alle Liebenden so einsam sind?

What You Need… One only needs an island alone and lost at sea. One only needs one person, but this to have is key.

Even cats grow lonely and anxious.

The only peace is being out of earshot.

Reading gives us a place to go when we have no where to go

Reading brings us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are..

Los días pasan, la noche permanece. Te echo de menos.

Algunas veces solo necesito esconderme, en otros momentos desaparecer, para que me dejen en paz, y no pensar en nada. Aunque lo mejor sería que me hiciera un traje de pájaro con mi sombra y volar, porque estoy harto de arrastrar la cara bajo tierra, de no ver ahí absolutamente nada, y pienso que, quizá, en el cielo, o justo encima, te encontraré.

The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master.