Quotes About Alienation

Imagine your body becoming that of a stranger. Imagine the sensation of it being not yours, as you discover what it feels like to do this, or to have this happen to you, for the very first time. Imagine it happening with sickening slowness, or with shocking speed, that discovery. And then imagine knowing it has come too late.

But we take better care of our cats and dogs than we do of homeless humans in the street. If we serve as pets to aliens, might they take better care of us than we ever will of ourselves?

We are so stricken We are so stricken that we think we're dying when the street casts an evil word at us. The street does not know it, but it cannot stand such a weight; it is not used to seeing a Vesuvius of pain break out. Its memories of primeval times are obliterated, since the light became artificial and angels only play with birds and flowers or smile in a child's dream

As certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.

A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.

Belonging nowhere, no one can tell who he really is. Who one really is depends on what world he belongs to. The secret multitudes who belong to no world, no way of life, no particular time and place, are the truly displaced persons: displaced from their true selves. They are not the disinherited: they are those who have disinherited their own selves.

Being a genius doesn't make you smart, happy, or successful. In fact, sometimes the opposite. Studies have shown that people with genius-level I.Q.s are often unhappy, alienated from the society around them, impatient with people of lesser intelligence, angry at how stupid and ignorant the world is, and generally self-absorbed and untrusting. In fact, they only trust themselves and they rarely take the advice of others.

If you move to Canada, after a few years you call yourself Canadian. In Germany, it's difficult to belong.

My own bandmembers wouldn't return my calls and I lost multiple tour managers, crew members. I can't tell you how many friends stopped talking to me.

Some musicians make and record music; other musicians play in a band... I just make and record music, and I don't feel a part of anything in any music business.

I don't get involved with the music scene any more. It's just alien to me.

I've never fit in anywhere in my life. Ever.

I really feel stateless, which is not bad, because I always felt a man without a country was not encumbered by narrow loyalties.

Though often surrounded by people, Hattie felt dreadfully alone.

Rhonda looked like she'd been sent for and couldn't come, got there and wasn't wanted.

Don't talk to me about sense. i've been alive for forty-seven years and I have absolutely no understanding of human nature whatsoever. I might as well be living with a completely different species, giant squids or perhaps some kind of insect colony.

Not for reasons unknown!" Ripley said, again. One more time, she thought. The more she told her story, the less they seemed to believe it, and the more terrible it became to her. "I told you, we set down there on company orders to get this thing which destroyed my crew. And your expensive ship.

Nihil humanum a me alienum puto, said the Roman poet Terence: 'Nothing human is alien to me.' The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.

Nonetheless, there are in all periods people who feel themselves in some fashion to be *apart*.

Does he know about me? George wonders; do any of them? Oh yes, probably. It wouldn't interest them. They don't want to know about my feelings or my glands or anything below my neck. I could just as well be a severed head carried into the classroom to lecture to them from a dish.

The Europeans hate us because we've retired to live inside our advertisements, like hermits going into caves to contemplate. We sleep in symbolic bedrooms, eat symbolic meals, are symbolically entertained- and that terrifies them, that fills them with fury and loathing because they can never understand it.

That's what makes most places utterly impossible - the people. They're so completely hateful. They want everybody to conform to their beastly narrow little way of looking at things. And if one happens not to, one's treated as something unspeakable. And then there's nothing for it but to leave at once.

Thou from this land, I from myself am banish'd.

Tommy had felt alone in a crowd before, even inferior to everyone in a crowd, but now he felt, well, different. It wasn't just the clothes and the make up, it was the humanity. He wasn't part of it. Heightened senses or not, he felt like he had his nose pressed against the window, looking in. The problem was, it was the window of a donut shop.