Quotes About Isolation

I had come to appreciate the reality of solitude and the illusion of community that bars provide.

I took only one suitcase, and a cosmetics case for medicines but I was worried about books. Solitude is all right with books, awful without.

It is much harder to be lonely, when you have for a while stopped being lonely. I was used to having only myself, cold and hard as that is; I could live with it. And now I wait, for a voice, a face, a body, that is not going to be here, is not mine, does not in any case wait as I do, nor share this homesickness. […] How to explain that I taught myself to be tough and indifferent, because it mattered too much and learned not even to weep in my mind not to notice.

none had been outside Russia. I kept trying to remember something that I had read about a species of fish that was born, lived, spawned, died in the dark waters of a cave; and were blind.

He had no other life and no other knowledge; he knew that he could not live anywhere now because in his mind, slyly, there was nothing but horror.

Perhaps he was fit for the life of a hermit. Give up all of his worldly possessions and go live in a hut on a shelf of rock and watch the sunrise every morning. Up before the sun! What a dreadful idea; he shuddered.

Being a human means accepting promises from other people and trusting that other people will be good to you. When that is too much to bear, it is always possible to retreat into the thought, "I'll live for my own comfort, for my own revenge, for my own anger, and I just won't be a member of society anymore." That really means, "I won't be a human being anymore.

Work did not destroy the loneliness; work was only a fog in which they moved so that they might not see the loneliness of each other

It's so hard, because so much of the time when I'm here, what you're seeing is not what I'm seeing. I feel like such an imposter. I'm out in my ocean, and you don't know that. And I can't tell you what's going on. Sometimes I'd really like to tell you, but I can't. I'm gone.

I believe that most of us cannot know what we would do, trapped in a situation that required such a seemingly no-win decision. But I do know that anyone wanting to recover from psychological trauma must face just this kind of dilemma, made yet more harrowing because her circumstance is not anything so rescuable as being locked in a house, but rather involves a solitary, unlockable confinement inside the limits of her own mind.

All I wanted to do was watch media and not exist. I said, You know I don't like fun.

The HubSystem that controlled their habitat, that they were dependent on for food, shelter, filtered air, and water, was trying to kill them. And in their corner all they had was Murderbot, who just wanted everyone to shut up and leave it alone so it could watch the entertainment feed all day.

In the shows, I saw humans comfort each other all the time at moments like this. I had never wanted that and I still didn't. (Touching while rendering assistance, shielding humans from explosions, etc., is different.) But I was the only one here, so I braced myself and made the ultimate sacrifice. "Uh, you can hug me if you need to.

I never know what to say to that. I am actually alone in my head, and that's where 90 plus percent of my problems are.

Nobody fucking listens to me.

I can't do even the half-assed version of this stupid job if I have to talk to humans.

I didn't need as much air as humans did, but I needed some, and it was really cold out there, in the colony ship's shadow. This meant that if the life-tender failed it would take me longer to die so I'd have longer to feel dumb about it than a human would.

I needed to have an emotion in private.

I told Mensah through the feed that I wouldn't speak aloud on the comm anymore. She tapped back an acknowledgment on the feed, and I heard her telling the others to get off my feed and my comm, that she was going to be the only one speaking to me so I wasn't distracted. Mensah underestimated my ability to ignore humans but I appreciated the thought.

In the shows, I saw humans comfort each other all the time at moments like this. I had never wanted that and I still didn't. (Touching while rendering assistance, shielding humans from explosions, etc., is different.) But I was the only one here, so I braced myself and made the ultimate sacrifice. "Uh, you can hug me if you need

because privacy blah blah blah

I couldn't pin down what was bothering me. Scan was negative, and this far away from the team there was no ambient sound except the whisper through the air system. Maybe it was the lack of security camera access, but I'd been in worse places with no cameras. Maybe it was something subliminal. Actually, it felt pretty liminal. Pro-liminal. Up-liminal? Whatever, there was no knowledge base here to look it up.

I never know what to say to that. I am actually alone in my head, and that's where 90 plus percent of my problems are.

I am actually alone in my head, and that's where 90 plus percent of my problems are.