Quotes About Isolation

I'm like an animal who's been locked out of his nice, safe cage.

I dream of being alone on top of a mountain, surveying the land around me, greens and yellows--and the sun directly above, pressing my shadow into a tight ball around my legs. As the sun drops into the afternoon sky, the shadow undrapes itself and stretches out toward the horizon, long and thin, and far behind me...

Sexuality cannot be isolated, or made the special or choice vehicle of ecstasy, because the human being needs totality, he is totality. All searching that isolates one element of human nature in order to make it the only vehicle of the quest anticipates neurotic contact with life.

A castaway in the sea was going down for the third time when he caught sight of a passing ship. Gathering his last strength, he waved frantically and called for help. Someone on board peered at him scornfully and shouted back, Get a boat!

I went out and had a drink. I needed to talk to someone, and solitary drinkers are lucky in this regard— they always have someone to talk to.

I don't think there's any loneliness greater than the loneliness to be found in a bad marriage. In solitary confinement, everyone knows you're lonely and feels sorry for you. In a bad marriage loneliness is your darkest secret, one you dare not even share with your spouse.

The civilized want people to make their living individually, and they want them to live separately, behind locked doors—one family to a house, each house fully stocked with refrigerators, television sets, washing machines, and so on.

And with each new comfort, with each new modern convenience, man slowly dies. He removes himself from his humanity.

Se sentía solo con su vida solitaria, pero a veces la soledad era aún mayor cuando estaba rodeado de personas que no cesaban de exigirle cosas. Necesitaba un respiro.

The old man had been tanned by the light of too many beer signs, and it just goes to show that you can't live on three packs of Chesterfields and a fifth of bourbon a day without starting to drift far too fuckin' wide in the turns.

Gail had a baby named Ned who was four months old, and a new look of baffled hurt, a left-behind sadness, like she saw that the great world kept spinning onward and away while she'd overnight become glued to her spot.

For the coronavirus has fueled a retreat that had already begun from globalization and from the international institutions and cooperation that have underpinned it. In 2008–2009, international collaboration was key to conquering the financial contagion. A dozen years later, such cooperation at the governmental and international level in fighting the contagion of the virus was notable by its absence.

The hardest thing for me was leaving my friends and family behind.

I have a lot of friends, but my biggest fear is loneliness. I miss my family in Mumbai, and my biggest nightmare every day is to go back home alone.

Despair – or as I like to call it, des-pair – means feeling unpaired in a world in which it feels like everyone else is paired with a good job, a happy marriage, loving family, caring, and hope – and you're not.

I love people. I love my family, my children… but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.

"People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges."

"You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape; my eyes are dim with grief."

Fake friends are like autumn leaves, they're scattered everywhere.

A lot of people ask me if I were shipwrecked, and could only have one book, what would it be? I always say 'How to Build a Boat.'

You make me feel like a firefly. Trapped in a belljar; starved for love.

The worst feeling is to be ignored once, then twice, then again and again by someone you consider precious.

I miss having my mom and close friends around. Thank God for Skype and Face-Time, which keep me connected… but interacting digitally can't come close to the feeling of being hugged by my mom or getting together for a meal with my friends on the same table.

Living with someone you love can be lonelier than living entirely alone, if the one that you love doesn't love you.