Quotes About Isolation

They found no colonists, but they found parts of them. And a lot of blood.

sequestered in a smelly stateroom on a rusting ship filled with kidney-stabbing miscreants

There was a reason why Special Forces soldiers hardly ever retired - being retired means losing integration. Losing integration means being alone.

In a perfect world this wouldn't be necessary, but I don't live in a perfect world, I live in rural Ohio. [Blog post mentioning Internet Access problems where he lives: whateverDOTscalziDOTcom/2019/02/26/smudge-shot-plus-internet-update/]

Here's one way to colonize: You take two hundred or three hundred people, allow them to pack what supplies they see fit, drop them off on the planet of their choice, say "see you," and then come back a year later—after they've all died of malnutrition brought on by ignorance and lack of supplies, or have been wiped out by another species who wants the place for themselves—to pick up the bones. This isn't a very successful way to colonize.

So they sealed Earth off from the rest of humanity to keep the people there from knowing just how perfectly they're being held in stasis. Manufactured a disease-they called it the Crimp-and told the people on Earth it was an alien infection. Used it as an excuse to quarantine the planet. They let it flare up every generation or two just to maintain the pretense.

Oh, and maybe I should say what my name is. Just for the record. It's Rafe. Rafe Daquin. I'm Rafe Daquin, and I'm a brain in a box. Hi.

Alex Roentgen twisted again, faced the ground that would kill him, and screamed the scream of the abandoned.

One cannot live outside the machine for more perhaps than half an hour. VIRGINIA WOOLF, THE WAVES

According to Hidary, most people become too dependent on one facet of their lives. And when one facet takes up 80 percent of somebody's total exposed surface area, they tend to become defensive around it, protective. They become "experts." They treat what they know as a stock rather than a flow, and they tend to isolate themselves from flows of new knowledge and the people creating them.

He liked living simply. And he liked living alone. He had grown to dislike physical affection. It was intrusive, and it bullied his self esteem, because he wasn't good at it.

A guy needs somebody?to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick.

it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.

The quality of owning freezes you forever in I, and cuts you off forever from the we.

Ain't many guys travel around together," he mused. "I don't know why. Maybe ever'body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.

George's voice became deeper. He repeated his words rhythmically as though he had said them many times before. 'Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake, and the first thing you know they're poundin' their tail on some other ranch. They ain't got nothing to look ahead to.

As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.

I ain't got no people. I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone. That ain't no good. They don't have no fun. After a long time they get mean. They get wantin' to fight all the time. . . 'Course Lennie's a God damn nuisance most of the time, but you get used to goin' around with a guy an' you can't get rid of him.

Nearly everybody has his box of secret pain, shared with no one.

Money is not nice. Money got no friends but more money.

I could be held back just by being needed. Please try not to need me. That's the worst bait of all to a lonely man.

I seen it over an' over—a guy talkin' to another guy and it don't make no difference if he don't hear or understand. The thing is, they're talkin', or they're settin' still not talkin'. It don't make no difference, no difference. [...] George can tell you screwy things, and it don't matter. It's just the talking. It's just bein' with another guy. That's all.

Through my own efforts, I am lost most of the time without any help from anyone.

When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.