Quotes About Isolation

Well, the universe had spoken. There was no one left to turn to.

Maybe she was the lucky one, I thought, a woman who had divested herself of both future and past. No dreams, no standards, a woman who smoked and drank and slept with men like Sergei, men who were spiritually what came up out of the sewers when it rained.

But how long can a person float, looking at an empty horizon? How long do you drift before you call it quits?

Loneliness was the human condition, I had to get used to it.

So often when I was with her, she was unreachable. Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.

Don't you let them forget about you," she said. But this was not about being forgotten. This was about being in a file cabinet with my name on it and they closed the door. I was a corpse with a tag on my toe.

Wait for me, you said. Then left me alone in the echoing world.

Her name was Lost. Her name was Nobody's Daughter.

She was drifting outside the limit of all reason, where the next stop was light-years away through nothing but darkness.

IT DIDN'T TAKE ME long to figure out why the girls called Amelia Cruella De Vil. In the beautiful wooden house, we went hungry all the time.

The future was a white fog into which I would vanish, unmarked by the flourish of rustling taffeta blue and gold. No mother to guide me. I

Everybody left you eventually. He

this was not about being forgotten. This was about being in a file cabinet with my name on it and they closed the door. I was a corpse with a tag on my toe. A

It made me feel dizzy, like I wanted to grab hold of something heavy and hang on. This was the life I was going to be living, everyone separated from everyone else, hanging on for a moment, only to be washed away. I could grow up and drift away too. My mother might never know where I was, and in a few years, if someone asked her about me, she might shrug like this and say, "Haven't seen her in two, three years.

Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness.

Loneliness ia a human condition

Loneliness is the human condition, get used to it.

They congratulated themselves and went back out to their sodas and Chex mix, leaving me in front of the mirror, a toddler's fussed-over Barbie abandoned in the sandbox. I blinked back my tears and forced myself to look in the mirror. Looking

Michael hated this, it was the worst thing he could imagine, disappearing into the mass- he didn't know how to submerge himself, he was the puzzle piece that fit nowhere.

They'd retreated to the country with two passports only. From the outside it looked like death. People could pound the walls all they wanted, but they'd never find the door. Nobody could guess at the gardens inside.

Michael, in a motel in Twentynine Palms, a gun in his hands. Not at Meredith's, painting in an explosion of new creation. Not over on Sunset, digging through the record bins, or at Launderland separating the darks and lights. Not at the Chinese market, looking at the fish with their still-bright eyes. Not at the Vista watching an old movie. Not sketching down at Echo Park. He was in a motel room in Twentynine Palms, putting a bullet in his brain.

She grew more and more silent about what really mattered. She curled inside herself like one of those black chimney brushes, the little shellfish you see on the beach, and you touch them, and then go inside and don't come out.

But it is imperative, for our own survival, that we avoiid one another, and what more successful means of avoidance are there than words? Language will keep us safe from human onslaught, will express for us our regret at being unable to supply groceries or love or peace.

I didn't feel comfortable with this new world. My northern isolation had protected me from all this.