Quotes About Isolation

Our brother Darl in a cage in Jackson where, his grimed hands lying light in the quiet interstices, looking out he foams.

The newly emerging ideal was solitude, purity, perfect waves far from civilization.

But surfing always had this horizon, this fear line, that made it different from other things, certainly from other sports I knew. You could do it with friends, but when the waves got big, or you got into trouble, there never seemed to be anyone around.

BUT SURFING ALWAYS HAD this horizon, this fear line, that made it different from other things, certainly from other sports I knew. You could do it with friends, but when the waves got big, or you got into trouble, there never seemed to be anyone around. Everything out there was disturbingly

But what I remember is the countryside then, the brilliance of outdoors and outwindows, and the sunlight streaming through the lozenge shapes of the glass, and we were locked away from it, locked inside to worship. And there was the sun out there for everyone else to see. Good God, tell me Clovis wasn't lonely at dawn. Tell me he wasn't sick at the sunset.

When we lose contact with the beloved one, we lose contact with the whole world.

I guess we all know somebody like him, talk him out of suicide till the day one of you finally dies in bed like talking to yourself most of the time . . .

and the romantics end up anchorites in the desert.

Lost, so small amid that dark, hands grown cold, body image fading down corridors of television sky.

Case fell into the prison of his own flesh.

I'm away for a while. But there's no cash on the premises, no drugs, and the pitbull's tested positive. Twice.

Yeah, it's so popular it's almost legal. The customers are torn between needing someone and wanting to be alone at the same time, which has probably always been the name of that particular game, even before we had the neuroelectronics to enable them to have it both ways.

She looks after him, feeling a wave of longing, loneliness. Not sexual particularly but to do with the nature of cities, the thousands of strangers you pass in a day, probably never to see again.

Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.

Not if I remember to take my pills, he said, as a tangible wave of longing hit him, lust and loneliness riding in on the wavelength of amphetamine.

The room was empty, aside from the wide pink bedslab and two nylon bags, new and identical, that lay beside it. Blank walls, no windows, a single white-painted steel firedoor. The walls were coated with countless layers of white latex paint. Factory space. He knew this kind of room, this kind of building; the tenants would operate in the interzone where art wasn't quite crime, crime not quite art.

I think I'd tell her about the loneliness of being misunderstood. Or is it the loneliness of being afraid to allow ourselves to be understood?

I had a cigarette," Case said, looking down at his white-knuckled fist. "I had a cigarette and a girl and a place to sleep. Do you hear me, you son of a bitch? You hear me?

cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule

How she felt, now, was just the way she'd felt that day she'd come back to the trailer and found her mother all packed up and gone. No message there but a can of ravioli in a pot on the stove, with the can-opener propped up beside it. She hadn't eaten that ravioli and she hadn't eaten any since and she knew she never would.

Centered in the square carpet of green plastic turf, a Japanese teenager sat behind a C-shaped console, reading a textbook. The white fiberglass coffins were racked in a framework of industrial scaffolding. Six tiers of coffins, ten coffins on a side.

You could buy a burrito there, a lottery ticket, batteries, tests for various diseases. You could do voice-mail, e-mail, send faxes. It had occurred to Laney that this was probably the only store for miles that sold anything that anyone ever really needed; the others all sold things that he couldn't even imagine wanting.

Slick stayed where he was, looking up at Gentry's pale eyes, gray in this light, his taut face. Why did he put up with Gentry anyway? Because you needed somebody, in the Solitude. Not just for electricity; that whole landlord routine was really just a shuck. He guessed because you needed somebody around.

You dead awhile there, mon." "It happens," he said. "I'm getting used to it." "You dealin' wi' th' darkness, mon." "Only game in town, it looks like." "Jah love, Case