Quotes About Isolation

Charles J. Shields

and I was reminded....of the everday boredom of a life in espionage. One is always waiting for someone who does not show up,for something that does not happen.

Dar te-ndragesc jivina de neinduplecat Chiar si-n raceala-n care sublim te-ai ferecat

All men are islands, surrounded by the bottomless oceans of unthinking night.

Starships are all work and no fun.

the domes and dildos of pressurized buildings cast slowly lengthening shadows.

OF COURSE, SPACE travel isn't only about being stuffed into a claustrophobia-inducing cell, scared witless, trussed up in a restraint harness, and raped through every orifice for years on end. Because, you know, if that was all there was to it, there'd be a queue outside every travel agent.

You want to know what it's like to emigrate to Saturn system? Imagine spending six years in a straitjacket tied to the outside of a skyscraper, with only a couple dozen similar lunatics for company.

I passed through this stage years ago on Venus, where I was so unfashionable that eventually I almost convinced myself I no longer cared that nobody wanted me; but recent events have reawakened my need for intimacy.

But otherwise it's darkness, darkness, as far as the eye can see.

It seems I have not been truly myself for a long time," he says, barely whispering, a dry, papery sound like files shuffling in a dead document archive.

Es que no saben que el único ordenador inhackeable es el que tiene instalado un sistema operativo seguro y está encerrado en una caja fuerte de acero enterrada bajo una tonelada de hormigón en el fondo de una mina de carbón protegida por los SAS y un par de divisiones armadas, y además está apagado?

The IT worker has to know in their bones that if they make a mistake, things can go horribly wrong. Tension and cynicism are constant companions, along with camaraderie and competitiveness. It's a lot like being a spy, or necromancer. You don't get out much, and when you do it's usually at night.

because there's something joyless and deadening in the air, as if what this room really holds is the decaying miscarried fetus of the human future. Anyone who lingers here will sicken and die, just as if they were stranded in the pyramid on a dead world where once the photo-reconnaissance Concordes flew.

He looked like an angelic little boy who had been kicked out of his orphanage for failing to take part in group masturbation.

as the world forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no-one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving - not coming from any place; not arriving any place. Just driving, counting off time. Now you are here, at 7:43. Now you are here, at 7:44. Now you are... Gone.

When men learnt to talk in the beginning of the civilised word they used language not as a means of communication alone but as a means of excluding others--using it as a way of setting themselves apart and shutting out strangers.

The Internet is for lonely people. People should live.

I'd sooner go through with a pregnancy than spend a night alone in my house knowing there was a snake in the yard.

Being in jail was similar to being in a hospital bed: You're fine until you see or speak to someone from your family, and then you completely lose your shit.

Children left their old parents at home and scattered in all directions in search of money. It was hard on an old woman with eight children. It was like having a river and yet washing one's hands with spittle.

That's how it is sometimes when we plunge into the depths of our lives. No one can accompany us, not even those who would give up their hearts for our happiness.

She contemplated a mystery: How is it I am humiliated when I am alone? Does not humiliation demand an audience?

I kind of understood at a young age that I didn't play well with most other kids in the sandbox.