Quotes About Isolation

When it was over, Mary Ann left the bar and walked through Aquatic Park to the bay. She stood there for several minutes in a chill wind, staring at the beacon on Alcatraz. She made a vow not to think about her mother for a while.

And this was what bothered him about owning a VCR. If that cowboy was yours for the taking—yours at the flip of a switch—what was to stop you from abandoning human contact altogether? He

Would she ever stop feeling like a colonist on the moon?

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

He found it both sad and fascinating that only through an artificial universe of video images could she establish contact with the real world.

Imagine that every man's mind is an island, surrounded by ocean. Each seems isolated, yet in reality all are linked by the bedrock from which they spring. If the ocean were to vanish, that would be the end of the islands. They would all be part of one continent, but the individuality would have gone

Sometimes, during the lonely hours on the control deck, Bowman would listen to this radiation. He would turn up the gain until the room filled with a crackling, hissing roar; out of this background, at irregular intervals, emerged brief whistles and peeps like the cries of demented birds. It was an eerie sound, for it had nothing to do with Man; it was as lonely and meaningless as the murmur of waves on a beach, or the distant crash of thunder beyond the horizon.

He wanted to close his eyes and shut out the pearly nothingness that surrounded him, but that was an act of a coward and he would not yield to it.

He was alone in an airless, partially disabled ship, all communication with Earth cut off. There was not another human being within half a billion miles. And yet, in one very real sense, he was not alone. Before he could be safe, he must be lonelier still.

They had forgotten much, but they did not know it. They were as perfectly fitted to their environment as it was to them—for both had been designed together. What was beyond the walls of the city was no concern of theirs; it was something that had been shut out of their minds. Diaspar was all that existed, all that they needed, all that they could imagine. It mattered nothing to them that Man had once possessed the stars.

He pressed the button, and waited. Several minutes later, a metal arm moved out from the bunk, and a plastic nipple descended toward his lips. He sucked on it eagerly, and a warm, sweet fluid coursed down his throat, bringing renewed strength with every drop.

Please leave me alone; let me go on to the stars.

The sixth member of the crew cared for none of these things, for it was not human. It was the highly advanced HAL 9000 computer

Someone had once said that you could be terrified in space, but you could not be worried there.

That's still looking a long way ahead. For the present, you're the only person who should attempt communication. Agreed, Captain?

Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying

I am having difficulty in maintaining contact with Earth. The trouble is in the AE-35 unit. My Fault Prediction Center reports that it may fail within seventy-two hours.

He had lost his race. And he knew that he had lost it, not by the few weeks or months that he had feared, but by millennia. The huge and silent shadows driving across the stars, more miles above his head than he dared to guess, were as far beyond his little Columbus as it surpassed the log canoes of paleolithic man. [...] All that the past ages had achieved was as nothing now: only one thought echoed and re-echoed through Reinhold's brain: The human race was no longer alone.

I'm lighting a cigarette—I've always wanted to smoke in a space suit.

after Hal had refused to open the Pod Bay door.

If the decades and the centuries pass with no indication that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, the long-term effects on human philosophy will be profound, and may be disastrous. Better to have neighbors we don't like than to be utterly alone. —Arthur C. Clarke

When the barriers were down at last, loneliness would vanish as personality faded.

Carente de contacto con el mundo exterior, era un universo en sí misma.

Two possibility exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.