Quotes About Isolation

My room is cheerfully located between the sixth-floor elevators. The springs of my bed wheeze. The elevator dings. The ice machine right outside my door rumbles forth its icy bounty, a steady tattoo that beats "Stay up! Stay up!" I am in a canvas that Edward Hopper never felt bummed out enough to paint.

Besides, if I wanted to hear people speaking wall-to-wall French, all I had to do was remove my headphones and participate in what is known as 'real life,' a concept as uninviting as a shampoo cocktail.

The landscape is best described as 'pedestrian hostile.' It's pointless to try to take a walk, so I generally just stay in the room and think about shooting myself in the head.

My only comfort was the knowledge that I was not alone. Huddled in the hallways and making the most of our pathetic French, my fellow students and I engaged in the sort of conversation commonly overheard in refugee camps. Sometime me cry alone at night. That be common for I, also, but be more strong, you. Much work and someday you talk pretty. People start love you soon. Maybe tomorrow, okay.

While the builders worked on the cottage, Hugh lived in what used to be the stable but was later converted into a guesthouse, the kind you'd have if you wanted to either discourage guests or contain them in one spot while slowly depressing them to death.

It's from Scandinavia! This, we learned, was the name of a region, a cold and forsaken place where people stayed indoors and plotted the death of knobs.

inhabited by hopeless, motor-mouthed simpletons, drifting from a bad place to somewhere even worse. If you're lucky, people on the bus will wake you in order to borrow a cigarette. The man occupying the window seat is likely to introduce himself with the line "What the hell are you staring at?

Also it's so cold here, too cold to do anything but sit in front of the space heater. Right now I'm wearing long underwear, a flannel shirt, a pajama shirt, a sweater, a jacket, a coat, and a hat. Inside.

I reached Odell convinced that if I never spoke to another human being for the rest of my life, it would be too soon.

They're pictures you take of yourself with a phone and send to the people you no longer communicate with by talking.

Since receiving my last phone bill I have taken to fastening the telephone to its cradle, using some of the threaded packing tape stolen from what used to be my job. In the rare event of an incoming daytime call I can always grab a knife or scissors, but luckily the task appears to be too strenuous during my ever increasing personal mystery hours. Another problem solved with simplicity and grace.

Motherfucker, I ain't seen pussy in so long, I'd throw stones at it.

I felt the hatred of my classmates and slunk down in my seat. Then

A great book allows me to leap over that wall: in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness, I feel human and unalone.

La victoria separa más que la derrota.

Soy el ser más egoísta del mundo porque quise ser independiente. Eso me alejó de todos, me convirtió en una isla.

one small thing I've learned these years, how to be alone, and at the edge of aloneness how to be found by the world.

some of us live in big cities so we can be alone, so we can avoid ourselves, and yet by living within massive populations we can have help or love within reach if necessary.

All the verdant growth had been left behind them to the south. Up ahead, the roads dissected what looked like a vast wasteland. Far in the distance rose a lone hill, upon which a Roman fortress held its place like a stone buzzard. The desert plain seemed to go on forever. And over it all, the wind moaned.

What were you to do when you didn't know anyone who could help you, no one who could explain the way to the things you wanted- what could you do- you couldn't just take a spade, a few bricks, and a gerenium and see what happened. You had to be rich, you had to be educated; you had to be powerful to stop contagious ugliness from spreading.

Those who understand the true nature of humanity are always loners

Given enough time, you could convince yourself that loneliness was something better, that it was solitude, the ideal condition for reflection, even a kind of freedom. Once you were thus convinced, you were foolish to open the door and let anyone in, not all the way in. You risked the hard-won equilibrium, that tranquility that you called peace

Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one's cow has exploded.

Being alone can be good. It's easy to find peace alone. But sometimes, being alone is a king of death.