Quotes About Isolation

Life is Tuesday afternoon in a cage.

The best people are the ones you never meet.

Lees je Céline?' vroeg een vrouwenstem. Haar stem klonk tamelijk sexy. Ik had me al een tijd eenzaam gevoeld. Tientallen jaren eigenlijk.[...] 'Nou, aan de slag. Ik wil Frankrijks grootste schrijver. Ik wacht al heel lang.

No me enorgullecía de mi soledad, pero dependía de ella. La oscuridad de la habitación era fortificante para mí como lo era la luz del sol para otros hombres.

tonight this room is smoky and I am alone listening to the silence. I am tired of waiting on life, it was so slow to arrive and so quick to leave. the streets and the cities are empty, love is on the damned cross and death laughs in the back room. at the edge, the edge, the edge.

Non ero ancora morto, solo in un stato di rapido decadimento.

A mí cada vez que alguien me hablaba me entraban ganas de tirarme por la ventana o de escapar en el ascensor. La gente, simplemente, no me resultaba interesante. Quizá no tenía por qué serlo. Pero los animales, los pájaros, incluso los insectos lo eran. No podía entenderlo.

women were beyond me. they saw something depraved. there was one waitress a little older than I, she rather smiled, lingered when she brought my coffee. that was plenty for me, that was enough. - Young in New Orleans

My eyes were blue and nobody loved me but myself.

Oftentimes in those roominghouses and cheap apartments there was nothing to do when you were broke and starving and down to the last bottle. There was nothing to do but listen to those wild arguments. It made you realize that you weren't the only one who was more than discouraged with the world, you weren't the only one moving toward madness.

It wasn't ENOUGH that I was working beside him like an idiot; it wasn't enough for him that I was wasting the few good hours left in my life—no, he also wanted me to share his own mind-soul, to sniff his dirty stockings, to chew on his angers and hates with him. I was not PAID for that, the fucker. And that's what killed you on the job—not the actual physical work but being closed in with the dead. I

I like to prowl ordinary places and taste the people—from a distance. I don't want them too near because that's when attrition starts.

you are alone, Chinaski, and below the stage the seats are empty. the theatre is dark. why do you keep acting? what a bad habit.

but please if you feel that way don't phone don't write don't arrive

Sulla via per l'inferno c'è sempre un sacco di gente, ma è comunque una via che si percorre in solitudine.

it's always when a man's swollen with love and everything else that it keeps raining splattering flooding rain good for the trees and the grass and the air… good for things that live alone. — Charles Bukowski, from "Prayer in Bad Weather," Love Is a Dog from Hell: Poems, 1974-1977 . (Ecco; Ecco edition May 31, 2002) Originally published 1977.

Most of these men's lives were so tortured that I enjoyed reading about them, thinking, well, I am in hell too and I can't even write music.

He had nothing, and he found out that having nothing was difficult too.

WHEN YOU LEAVE YOUR TYPEWRITER YOU LEAVE YOUR MACHINE GUN AND THE RATS COME POURING THROUGH.

So there I was: neither an intellectual, an artist; nor did I have the saving roots of the common man. I hung like something labeled in between, and I guess, yes, that is the beginning of insanity.

The lines on the page were pulled tight, like a man screaming, but not "Joe, where are you?" More like Joe, where is anything?

Getting out of bed in the morning was the same as facing the blank wall of the Universe.

I don't think I was insane but many of the insane think that but i think now if anything saved me it was the avoidance of the crowd

I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me.