Quotes About Isolation

Thomas Merton's Thoughts in Solitude.

Would being completely alone in a universe bring a sensation of closing limitations or infinitely expanding horizons with associated loneliness?

Laura Brandt knew all about coming out of a suspension chamber.

A large part of evolution is interaction. Isolation is not evolution; it is stagnation.

But it's so stupid. I just want to be left alone, I want time to come to terms with what's happened. That's all. We've got this beautiful farm, and we're making it work without hurting anybody.

On Earth everybody is a foreigner to their neighbour. It's because we're all squashed up so tight. Privacy is a cherished commodity. In public places, people don't chat to strangers, they avoid eye contact. It's because that's the way they want to be treated. I'm

Everybody vanishes apart from us. Why? What's different about us three?

the newly arrived Ivets being hunted down and killed. Beaten into the mud with makeshift clubs, or gored by baying sayce to the sound of cheers. If they looked through the window at an angle they would be able to see boats of all sizes sailing hurriedly out of the circular polyp harbours for the safety of the water. I hate Adamists, Lori said. Only Adamists could do this to one another. They do it because they don't know one another. They don't love, they can only lust and fear.

Arnice was lying motionless on the cot at the end, his head swaddled, leaving only narrow slits for his eyes and mouth.

it was simply the solar system's colder version of hell.

Man is a solitary animal condemned to live in herds.

Has it taught you to look at things different?' he asked. i thought, How does he know about all that? But i didn't have to ask him, because he just nodded toward his house. 'I bounce around them four walls a lot, Victor. I write some letters, I keep in touch with people. Putting your thoughts on paper, it makes you stop and notice stuff. Kind of slows you down.

He constructed a shell to hide his aloneness, and it hardened on his back. I know of no sadder story.

There are mornings when it feels as if you rise up to the surface through a mud bath. With your feet stuck in a block of cement. When you know that you've expired in the night and have nothing to be happy about except the fact that at least you've already died so they can't transplant your lifeless organs.

No matter how close people get, they never reach each other. Including us now. Even now, there's a place where each of us is alone.

So it is not fundamentally possible to be alone. Fundamentally, man has to be with other people. If man becomes totally, totally alone, then he is lost.

You spend your whole life believing that you will always be on the outside or on the borderline. You struggle and struggle, and yet it all seems to be in vain. And then, suddenly, you are allowed inside and lifted up into the light.

Loneliness is a source of loathsome ice-cold suffering, the suffering of unreality. At such times we need people to teach us that we're not really so far gone.

I can only move myself into the distance; my mother can never become for me, as I can for myself, a winged art object flying serenely through the air. She refuses to be isolated and remains unfathomable; my sentences crash in the darkness and lie scattered on the paper.

Gilbert?" Some days I hate all those who know my name.

Great loss is felt by no one

Ero un guscio. Vuoto. Accostami all'orecchio e senti il rombo lontano di un oceano fantasma.

He is at home with his solitude as the note reverberating inside a bell.

He heard a loon call, piercing and forlorn, and it poured into his spirit like cool water. It was a sad cry and he realized as he listened how barren the river had felt in the days without it. Why was a wail that seemed so lost and lonely so…what? Essential and lovely.