Quotes About Loneliness

A room? A nice room? A beautiful room? A beautiful room with bath? Swing high, swing low, swing to and fro...This happened and that happened... And then the days came and I was alone.

Quite alone. No voice, no touch, no hand....How long must I lie here? For ever? No, only for a couple of hundred years this time, miss....

The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.

There is no looking-glass here and I don't know what I am like now. I remember watching myself brush my hair and how my eyes looked back at me. The girl I saw was myself yet not quite myself. Long ago when I was a child and very lonely I tried to kiss her. But the glass was between us - hard, cold and misted over with my breath. Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I?

I've had enough of these streets that sweat a cold, yellow slime, of hostile people, of crying myself to sleep every night. I've had enough of thinking, enough of remembering.

She lifted her eyes. Blank, lovely eyes. Mad eyes. A mad girl.

Vain, silly creature. Made for loving? Yes, but she'll have no lover, for I don't want her and she'll see no other.

And then the days came when I was alone.

I had started out in life trusting everyone and now I trusted no one. So I had a few acquaintances and no close friends. It was perhaps in reaction against the inevitable loneliness of my life that I'd find myself doing bold, risky, even outrageous things without hesitation or surprise. I was usually disappointed in these adventures and they didn't have much effect on me, good or bad, but I never quite lost the hope of something better or different.

That was when it was sad, when you lay awake at night and remembered things. That was when it was sad, when you stood by the bed and undressed, thinking, "When he kisses me, shivers run up my back. I am hopeless, resigned, utterly happy. Is that me? I am bad, not good any longer, bad. That has no meaning, absolutely none. Just words. But something about the darkness of the streets has a meaning.

When we are in a corner with a coffee and a fine each he says: 'Do you know what I feel about you? I think you are very lonely. I know, because for a long time I was lonely myself. I hated people, I didn't want to see anyone. And one day I thought: No, this isn't the way. And now I go about a lot. I force myself to. I have a lot of friends; I'm never alone. Now I'm much happier.' That sounds pretty simple. I must try it when I get back to London. ...

Left alone, Miss Verney felt so old, lonely and helpless that she began to cry. No builder would tackle that shed, not for any price she could afford. But crying relieved her and she soon felt quite cheerful again. It was ridiculous to brood, she told herself.

I stopped going out; I stopped wanting to go out. That happens very easily. It's as if you had always done that - lived in a few rooms and gone from one to the other.

when you are dead to the world, the world rescues you, if only to make a figure of fun out of you

Why was it so difficult to make new friends once you were past forty Was it because we didn't have dreams anymore, only regrets?

Nobody was speaking. Only the cicadas continued their whine, indifferent to human tragedies.

When people looked at him they had the feeling of being shut out. He did not shut them out. He shut himself in.

Islands are metaphors of the heart, no matter what poet says otherwise.

Loneliness isn't about being by yourself. That's fine, right and good, desirable in many ways. Loneliness is about finding a landing-place, or not, and knowing that, whatever you do, you can go back there. The opposite of loneliness isn't company, it's return. A place to return.

I lay there, stretched out, looking at the one star visible through the tiny window of the room. Only connect. How can you do that when the connections are broken?

Atlas gazed out, as he always did, into infinite space, wishing he could be part of it, even for one hour.

I keep forgetting that if you live in a big city only mad people talk to themselves.

I thought no one was talking to me and the others thought I wasn't talking to them.

Only later, much later, too late, did I understand how small she (Mrs Winterson) was to herself. The baby nobody picked up. The uncarried child still inside her.