Quotes About Isolation

Morrow […] felt that OASIS had evolved into something horrible. "It had become a self-imposed prison for humanity. A pleasant place for the world to hide from its problems while human civilization slowly collapses, primarily due to neglect.

Capitalism would inch forward, without my actually having to interact face-to-face with another human being. Which was exactly how I preferred it, thank you.

But over the past few months, I'd come to see my rig for what it was: an elaborate contraption for deceiving my senses, to allow me to live in a world that didn't exist. Each component of my rig was a bar in a cell where I had willingly imprisoned myself.

She used to have to force me to log out every night, because I never wanted to return to the real world. Because the real world sucked. I

I stepped inside, closed the door, and locked it behind me. Then I made a silent vow not to go outside again until I had completed my quest. I would abandon the real world altogether until I found the egg.

I quickly lost track of time. I forgot that my avatar was sitting in Halliday's bedroom and that, in reality, I was sitting in my hideout, huddled near the electric heater, tapping at the empty air in front of me, entering commands on an imaginary keyboard. All of the intervening layers slipped away, and I lost myself in the game within the game. In

All dressed up with nowhere to go. Walking with a dead man over my shoulder. Don't run away, it's only me.…

I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn't know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all of my life. Right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it's also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real. Do you understand?

but the reception inside the van was for shit, since it was buried under a huge mound of dense metal.

Standing there, under the bleak fluorescents of my tiny one-room apartment, there was no escaping the truth. In real life, I was nothing but an antisocial hermit. A recluse. A pale-skinned pop culture–obsessed geek. An agoraphobic shut-in, with no real friends, family, or genuine human contact. I was just another sad, lost, lonely soul, wasting his life on a glorified videogame.

The sight suddenly drove home the fantastic isolation of the place.

Maybe it was just as I had always secretly feared: The apple had fallen right next to the Crazy Tree.

So I remained stuck at school. I felt like a kid standing in the world's greatest video arcade without any quarters, unable to do anything but walk around and watch the other kids play.

E avevo OASIS. La mia vita non era poi così male. O almeno è quello che continuavo a ripetermi, nel vano tentativo di alleviare la solitudine in cui mi ero trovato a vivere.

I'd realized that the best thing for my mental health would be to abandon social media altogether.

Zum ersten Mal in meinem Leben konnte mir die OASIS gestohlen bleiben.

Year after year, my eyes would scan the lunchroom like a T-1000, searching for a clique that might accept me.

Minha vida não era tão ruim. Pelo menos era isso o que dizia a mim mesmo o tempo todo, numa tentativa inútil de afastar a enorme solidão que sentia.

Para mim, a escola tinha sido um exercício darwiniano. Um ataque diário de ridicularização, abuso e isolamento.

Ali, sob as luzes fluorescentes de meu pequeno apartamento de um cômodo, não havia modo de escapar da verdade. Na vida real, eu não passava de um ermitão antissocial. Um recluso. Um geek pálido obcecado pela cultura pop. Um introvertido agorafóbico, sem amigos, família ou contato com pessoas. Eu era apenas mais uma alma triste, perdida e solitária, desperdiçando a vida em um videogame.

I tried my best to fit in. Year after year, my eyes would scan the lunchroom like a T-1000, searching for a clique that might accept me. But even the other outcasts wanted nothing to do with me. I was too weird, even for the weirdos. And girls? Talking to girls was out of the question. To me, they were like some exotic alien species, both beautiful and terrifying. Whenever I got near one of them, I invariably broke out in a cold sweat and lost the ability to speak in complete sentences.

She used to make me wear earplugs at night so I wouldn't hear her in the next room, talking dirty to tricks in other time zones.

For me, school had been a Darwinian exercise. A daily gauntlet of ridicule, abuse, and isolation.

Out here on the perimeter, there are no stars.