Quotes About Isolation

Nothing, nothing, the whole long day, nothing.

Gregor's glance then turned to the window. The dreary weather—the rain drops were falling audibly down on the metal window ledge—made him quite melancholy.

When she's not talking to him the house is heavy and cold and we know we're not supposed to talk to him either for fear she'll give us the bitter look. We know Dad has done the bad thing and we know you can make anyone suffer by not talking to him. Even little Michael knows that when Dad does the bad thing you don't talk to him from Friday to Monday and when he tries to lift you to his lap you run to Mam.

Matt Murdock is blind -- so he misses the prettiest morning of the year. All he gets is hissing pipes and an East Coast chill that goes straight for the bones

If I am ever to find these trees meaningful I must have you by the hand. As it is, they stretch dusty fingers into an obscure sky, and the snow looks up like a face dirtied with tears. Should I cry out and see what happens? There could only be a stranger wandering in this landscape, cold, unfortunate, himself frozen fast in wintry eyes.

It is my opinion that the isolated mind loses its purchase on reality all too easily and becomes prone to fantasy.

When you're up there hundreds of people will claim you as a friend. When you're down, you're lucky if one will buy you a cup of coffee.

I don't feel entirely alone when I go through the postcards on your website, or rather, I still feel alone, but I feel like there are a lot more people alone with me.

There was a more personal form of fragmentation that plagued postwar America, too—a sense that all the paper-pushing and file cabinets had divided workers from their creativity, rendering them miserable, isolated automatons.

Huge live oaks, hung with Spanish moss, partly hid a stately white Southern mansion in need of paint. Wisteria blossoms hung bell-like from vines climbing the walls. The Hardys mounted the steps of the still stately portico, supported by high, once-white round columns. Frank knocked repeatedly on the door. There was no response. As they circled the neglected structure, they rapped on windows, called out, pounded on side and back doors, with no results.

They drove around to the north shore, and presently came upon two large stone pillars covered with vines. The name MEAD was carved on one. As they turned into the driveway, Joe said, "The place looks deserted to me." A short distance ahead of them was a clump of trees, around which the driveway wound to the stone mansion. The imposing house at the end of the deeply rutted and overgrown road stood about two hundred feet from the water, commanding an unobstructed view of Barmet Bay.

The boys continued their journey in the deepening darkness. Ahead, the road wound through isolated, hilly country. Here and there they encountered patches of light radiation fog, a phenomenon common to this type of terrain.

My life is a walled city from which I must flee; This must my prison be-- So long as I am me.

I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.

April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone - never.

My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication--it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness--it is all that I have--and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.

We are as forlorn as children lost in the wood. When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours? And if I were to cast myself down before you and tell you, what more would you know about me that you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful?

Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.

What am I doing here in this endless winter?

We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

Nervous states of the worst sort control me without pause. Everything that is not literature bores me and I hate it. I lack all aptitude for family life except, at best, as an observer. I have no family feeling and visitors make me almost feel as though I were maliciously being attacked.

The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that makes us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, lost in a forest remote from all human habitation.