Quotes About Isolation

You knew you couldn't reason with him. Not in the state he'd created for himself.

Hablo de ese dolor que es tan grande que ni siquiera parece que te nace de dentro, sino que es como si hubieras sido sepultada por un alud. Y así estás. Tan enterrada bajo esas pedregosas toneladas de pena que no puedes ni hablar.

Os dois gigantes da literatura passariam a vida próximos um ao outro, mas jamais se encontrariam nem pessoal nem ideologicamente.

He doesn't communicate with us; he's put up an impenetrable wall that excludes us from his life.

Or maybe there was a god. Mine is the god of isolation, the god of the small voice, the god of the little spirit, of the earthworm and the friendly mouse, the hummingbird, the greenbottle fly and all things iridescent.

And here was the thing I didn't understand then but do now—the loneliness. I was right, in that there was just the three of us. Or the two of us. Nobody else, not Clemence, not even my mother herself, cared as much as we did about my mother. Nobody else thought night and day of her. Nobody else knew what was happening to her. Nobody else was as desperate as the two of us, my father and I, to get our life back. To return to the Before.

Roderick had never had so much company. And they were glad for somebody new. Glad he stayed behind. They argued with him. Why go back there? Who's waiting for you?

Her loneliness sometimes seemed a thing not of this world, but a loneliness only that mysterious being, solitary and unique, could understand.

the reflective isolation of this year

Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson

She has decided to appear to nobody but the feckless.

I tried to get away from him, to get to that door, but instead I backed up against the wall and was stuck there in that white, white room.

Too Loud a Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabel Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson Sula, by Toni Morrison The Shadow-Line, by Joseph Conrad The All of It, by Jeannette Haine Winter in the Blood, by James Welch Swimmer in the Secret Sea, by William Kotzwinkle The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald First Love, by Ivan Turgenev Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf Waiting for the Barbarians, by J. M. Coetzee Fire on the Mountain, by Anita Desai Sailboat

Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead

The Uninvited Guests, by Sadie Jones Ceremonies of the Damned, by Adrian C. Louis Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice Father of Lies, by Brian Evenson The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead

At last I passed along Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead

While in prison, I received a dictionary. It was sent to me with a note. This is the book I would take to a deserted island.

hell is not black or fiery. It is an unvaried gray without promise.

She took detailed notes and dispatched a servant to the Indian missions to procure fine lace produced by young women whose mothers had once worked the quills of porcupines and dyed hairs of moose together into intricate clawed flowers and strict emblems before they died of measles, cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, and left their daughters dexterous and lonely to the talents of nuns.

Everyone is so obsessed with themselves nowadays that they have no time for me.

The main thing isn't knowing whether you're right or wrong. That really doesn't matter...The main thing is to keep people from bothering you...The rest is eyewash...

In my room I'd barely closed my eyes when the blonde from the movie house came along and sang her whole song of sorrow just for me. I helped her put me to sleep, so to speak, and succeeded pretty well... I wasn't entirely alone... It's not possible to sleep alone...

Here we are, alone again. It's all so slow, so heavy, so sad. . . I'll be old soon. Then at last it will be over. So many people have come into my room. They've talked. They haven't said much. They've gone away. They've grown old, wretched, sluggish, each in some corner of the world.

I was a hundred-percent sick, I felt as if I had no further use for my legs, they just hung over the edge of my bed like unimportant and rather ridiculous objects.