Quotes About Isolation

Ya no existe el cohete. Nunca existió. Ni la gente. No hay nadie en todo el universo. Nunca hubo nadie. Ni planetas. Ni estrellas. Eso decía. Y luego algo acerca de sus pies y sus piernas y sus manos: No mas manos, decía. Ya no tengo manos. Nunca las tuve. Ni cuerpo. Nunca lo tuve. Ni boca. Ni cara. Ni cabeza. Nada. Solamente espacio. Solamente el abismo.

Going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapors for dinner.

They were all alone. Their voices had died like echoes of the words of God spoken and vibrating in the shared deep.

Far away in the cool dim empty rooms of the big old house, a silver bell tinkled and faded.

Cerrando los ojos, volviendo la cabeza, escuchando. Oh que viento solitario. México es un país raro. Todo selvas y desiertos y extensiones solitarias y aquí y allí un pueblo pequeño como éste, con unaa pocas luces encendidas que puedes apagar con un castañeo de los dedos.

It's a lonely life, but you're used to it now, aren't you?

My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn't look well. But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think.

The voice clock mourned out the cold hour of a cold morning of a still colder year.

I started traveling. My luggage was snowed under blizzards of travel stickers. I have been alone in Paris, alone in Vienna, alone in London, and all in all, it is very much like being alone in Green Town, Illinois. It is, in essence, being alone. Oh, you have plenty of time to think, improve your manners, sharpen your conversations. But I sometimes think I could easily trade a verb tense or a curtsy for some company that would stay over for a thirty-year weekend.

There are billions of us and that's too many. Nobody knows anyone. Strangers come and violate you. Strangers come and cut your heart out. Strangers come and take your blood.

Three in the morning, thought Charles Halloway, seated on the edge of his bed. Why did the train come at that hour? For, he thought, it's a special hour. Women never wake then, do they?

Perhaps I expected to look in and find a giant canary, stretched out on a carpet of dust, songless, capable of only heart murmurs for talk.

The courthouse clock struck nine and it was getting late and it was really night on this small street in a small town in a big state on a large continent on a planet earth hurtling down the pit of space toward nowhere or somewhere and Tom feeling every mile of the long drop.

There it sat, perfect as a fresh-laid egg on the dead sea bottom, the only nucleus of light and warmth in hundreds of miles of lonely wasteland. It was like a heart beating alone in a great dark body. He felt almost sorrowful with pride, gazing at it with wet eyes.

All of us improbable to one another because we are not present to one another

Deep forests, dark caves, dim churches, half-lit libraries were all the same, they turned you down, they dampened your ardor, they brought you to murmurs and soft cries for fear of raising up phantom twins of your voice which might haunt corridors long after your passage.

Once the bomb release was yanked, it was finished. Now, a full three seconds, all of the time in history, before the bombs struck, the enemy ships themselves were gone half around the visible world, like bullets in which a savage islander might not believe because they were invisible; yet the heart is suddenly shattered, the body falls in separate motions, and the blood is astonished to be freed on the air; the brain squanders its few precious memories and, puzzled, dies.

Ne kadar çok insan var, diye düÅŸündü. Bizim gibi milyarlarca insan var, ne kadar fazla. Kimse kimseyi bilmez. Yabanc?lar gelip seni rahats?z ederler. Yabanc?lar gelir, yüreÄŸini kesip al?rlar.

They felt lonely. They felt so alone, they wanted to cry.

All he really knew was that if he stayed here he would soon be the property of things that buzzed and snorted and hissed, that gave off fumes or stenches. In six months, he would be the owner of a large pink, trained ulcer, a blood pressure of algebraic dimensions, a myopia this side of blindness, and nightmares as deep as oceans and infested with improbable lengths of dream intestines through which he must violently force his way each night.

He had once been a wanderer of libraries and a lover of the finest literature in history. But when real life diminished him, when friends died, when a love failed, when there were too many deaths and accidents surrounding him, he discovered that his faith in books had failed because they could not help him when he needed the help. Turning on them, he lit a match.

The courthouse clock struck the hour. The sounds blew across a town that was empty, emptier than it had ever been. Over empty streets and empty lots and empty lawns the sound faded.

You're not like the others. I've seen a few; I KNOW. When I talk, you look at me. When I said something about the moon, you looked at the moon, last night. The others would never do that. The others would walk off and leave me talking. Or threaten me. No one has time any more for anyone else.

Then, left alone, shivering, I happened to glance up. I stood, I froze, blinking up through the drift, the drift, the silent drift of blinding snow. I saw the high hotel windows, the lights, the shadows. What's it like up there? I thought. Are fires lit? Is it warm as breath? Who are all those people? Are they drinking? Are they happy? Do they even know I'm HERE?