Quotes About Isolation

Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse.

It was a very lonely spirit that looked out from underneath those shaggy brows and comprehended men without fully communing with them, as if in spite of all its genial efforts at comradeship, it dwelt apart, saw its visions of duty where no man looked on.

Her belly ruptures full of parasites, Her eyes sink back in her skull Her butchered wrists, dangle From the edge of the bathtub Her children cuddle against her Desperate for love she cannot give

What is the good of being an island, if you are not a volcanic island?

And to wish to be alone, or to drink alone, or to do anything else alone, is the first step to the supernatural: which, in its turn, is the first step to the stake or the crucifix.

After all, is there any person so unhappy, so abandoned, that he doesn't have a little den into which he can withdraw and hide away from everyone? Nothing more elaborate is needed for the journey.

En verdad es posible ser tan desdichado, estar tan aislado como para no tener un refugio para apartarse y esconderse de la gente

La intensidad de una pasión se mide por la soledad que la precede.

La soledad de la existencia humana no significa romper amarras con el resto del universo y convertirse en un eremita intelectual o metafísico: la soledad de la existencia humana consiste en un sentirse solo, y por ello, enfrentarse y encontrarse con el resto del universo entero.

But why people need privacy? Why privacy is important? In China, every family live together, grandparents, parents, daughter, son and their relatives too. Eat together and share everything, talk about everything. Privacy make people lonely. Privacy make family fallen apart.

I wanted to hide away and write. I wanted to meet characters who would climb up my pen. I wanted to create a completely new world, inventing everyone and everything.

Red's world, you see, is a closed circle. Not that it matters. I know that I'm a closed circle, too, and it's all I can do to find some starting point from myself, while at the same time trying to find my own terminus. There's no way I'm ever going to find my beginning or end in somebody else's circle. Two people together never add up to anything more than one person added to another. That we continue to add ourselves up in this way is the reason human beings will always be lonely.

We were like family - family members always hurt each other. And Ben was not my family, he lived for himself. A Western body when Ben and I slept together, he could forget all about the love that was lying next to him in the dark. I felt he didn't need much warmth from anybody. His own 37.2º C were sufficient for him. His spirit slept alone.

I couldn't believe a mother and her daughter could have so much to say to each other. In my family, no one talked. In my family, people lived like insects, like worms, like slugs hanging on the back door of the house.

In all my time in Beijing, I'd never managed to have a female friend. It seemed every woman in this city was busy either with her kids or with her mortgage.

I felt he didn't need much warmth from anybody. His own 37.5º C were sufficient for him. His spirit slept alone. I thought about how, after Ben and I made love he'd turn his body away from me. His naked back would face me. Even though our bodies were just two or three centimeters apart, I couldn't bear that distance. I felt abandoned and sometimes, in the dark, I couldn't help myself, I missed Xiaolin. I missed nights with Xiaolin.

I was in a vicious cycle: writing and reading seemed to be the only way to beat back the loneliness, but they also reinforced it

Loneliness is a prerequisite for freedom. Freedom depends on the ability to reflect, and reflection can only begin when one is alone.

You're safe only when you can't see anybody.

Living right in the heart of Tokyo itself is quite like living in the mountains – in the midst of so many people, one hardly sees anyone.

I have to make do with a hollow heart full of holes.

After sitting for so long in the ruined cabin, the objects we had taken must have been shocked when we pulled them out into the world. I could almost sense their fear, coming through the bags.

Perhaps this was just evidence that his body was adapting to the secret room. Perhaps it was necessary to rid oneself of everything that was superfluous in order to immerse completely in this airless, soundproof, narrow space shrouded in the fear of discovery and arrest. In recompense for a mind that was able to retain everything, every memory, perhaps it was necessary that the body gradually fade away.

I watched him walking away, sweater over his shoulders, bag in hand, until he was no more than a tiny point in the distance. I watched, without so much as blinking, and I realized how utterly lonely I was. But all my staring couldn't prevent that distant point from vanishing like a snowflake dissolving in the sunlight.