Quotes About Introspection

Writing is done alone. People do not talk about the things they do alone.

I don't hate my relatives or those whose names fill my address book. But I do not want to have lunch with any of them. It is not personal. I am not angry. Nor is this about being afraid. I am not shy. I do not have terrible manners. Do birds hate lips? Do Fijians detest snowplows? Being a loner is not about hate, but need: We need what others dread. We dread what others need.

Alone, we are alive.

The most horrifying thing about art is its honesty

Writers' closest companions are inside their heads.

Yet introverts and loners are not one and the same thing.

Fürchterliche Ungewissheit? Fürchterlich nur so lange, als wir ihr nicht ins Auge zu blicken vermögen.

Sometimes I wonder why I write down all these memories. Would I want to give them to strangers to read?

You know very well that no one can enter the heart of another and become as one, not even for the shortest moment. Even your mother only made you flesh, and at your first breath you breathed in solitude

Ver a una mujer, y sentir en ese mismo instante que también ella me ha visto, que sus ojos interrogantes han quedado prendados de mí cómo si no tuviéramos más remedio que encontranos en el umbral de lo ignoto, de esa frontera oscura y melancólica de la conciencia...

Ver a una mujer, y sentir en ese mismo instante que también ella me ha visto, que sus ojos interrogantes han quedado prendados de mí cómo si no tuviéramos más remedio que encontrarnos en el umbral de lo ignoto, de esa frontera oscura y melancólica de la conciencia...

I swung the door open and relaxed. She wasn't there. I stepped in and shut the door behind me. I had promised God I wouldn't touch anything. I'd just look at what was lying around. If Jane Eyre had only looked around a little, she might have saved herself a lot of heartache.

Sometimes Felix seemed like an empty house, but he wasn't really. It was just that he kept all his possessions in a locked room. And when, once every few years, the door cracked open for a moment, she felt strangely moved to see herself within.

Have you looked in the mirror lately?" asked Bean.

break your heart

Thought creates character.

beautiful day for you is yourself.

The surest sign of age is loneliness.

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after.

I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.

She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. She read books as one would breathe ether, to sink in and die.

The secret is not to write about what you love best, but about what you, alone, love at all.