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adabc67 ...alone in this city, alone on this sea. The days were strewn about him, he was a drunkard of days. He had achieved nothing. He had his life--it was not worth much--not like a life that, though ended, had truly been something. If I had had courage,he thought, if I had had faith. We preserve ourselves as if that were important, and always at the expense of others. We hoard ourselves. We succeed if they fail, we are wise if they are foolish, and we go onward, clutching, until there is no one--we are left with no companion save God. In whom we do not believe. Who we know does not exist. loneliness faith selfishness regret James Salter
b3c7816 I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. solitude loneliness night Ernest Hemingway
df8c32a "You know the parlor trick. wrap your arms around your own body and from the back it looks like someone is embracing you her hands grasping your shirt her fingernails teasing your neck from the front it is another story you never looked so alone your crossed elbows and screwy grin you could be waiting for a tailor loneliness poetry Billy Collins
c3a706c From the photo albums, every single print of her had been peeled away. Shots of the both of us together had been cut, the parts with her neatly trimmed away, leaving my image behind. Photos of me alone or of mountains and rivers and deer and cats were left intact. Three albums rendered into a revised past. It was as if I'd been alone at birth, alone all my days, and would continue alone. loneliness nameless-protagonist photo-albums photos divorce revision Haruki Murakami
11841f1 Hoyt was by himself right under one of the portable lights rigged up for the occasion. He had his hands thrust in his pockets, and he looked more serious than I'd ever seen him. There was something strange about the sight, and after a second I figured out why. It was one of the few times I'd ever seen Hoyt alone. loneliness hoyt true-blood Charlaine Harris
5ff364d But what I did sense was an emptiness like a black hole inside of him, and there was no predicting what might emerge from a place like that. loneliness Ryū Murakami
9ac0d88 Sometimes isolation can be shared. solitude loneliness aloneness isolation Ken Grimwood
e9006de "Noli me tangere, noli me legere, solitude loneliness pain loss self-reliance isolation latin Mark Z. Danielewski
bbd99ac When you are a long way from where you think you belong, you will attach yourself to people you would otherwise ignore or even dislike. loneliness Russell Banks
26b6258 People were infected with the concept that happiness was something outside themselves, and a new and powerful form of loneliness was born. Mix loneliness with stress and enervation, and all sorts of madness can occur. Anxiety increases, and in order to obliterate the anxiety, people turn to extreme sex, violence, and even murder. loneliness Ryū Murakami
2576656 Tell me, Nana, If for example we had been a love couple, Would a hug have been enough to wash away my sadness? Or then; does every single being carry this loneliness, like a burden? I wans't intending to monopolizing you I just wanted you to need me. loneliness pain sadness love nana Ai yazawa
36649ad There was old sex in the room and loneliness, and expectation, of something without a shape or name. I remember that yearning, and was never the same as the hands that were on us there and then, in the small of the back, or out back, in the parking lot, or in the television room with the sound turned down and only the pictures flickering over lifting flesh. We yearned for the future How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability? loneliness sex insatiability yearning Margaret Atwood
b05519e Sometimes I feel as if I'm racing with my own shadow loneliness shadow Haruki Murakami
291eaf5 I just never noticed how little of me existed before. I was a shadow without a person. loneliness love Michael J. Sullivan
24140ea Loneliness wasn't just a state of mind, was it? It was tactile. She could feel it. It was a sixth sense, not in some fanciful play of words, but physically. It hurt... it hurt like phagocytes devouring the white matter of her brain. It was merely that she had no friends. She didn't even have a sanctuary in which she could simply be alone. loneliness college friendless lonely Tom Wolfe
ad4f7c8 Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness. loneliness hate mortality immortality friends love lifeboat stranded desperate blame society enemies guilt mental-illness Joseph Conrad
9ae0dac She spent the foggy day in endless, aimless walking, for it seemed to her that if she moved quickly enough she would escape the fear that hunted her. It was a vague and shadowy fear of something cruel and stupid that had caught her and would never let her go. She had always known that it was there - hidden under the more of less pleasant surface of things. Always. Ever since she was a child. You could argue about hunger or cold or loneliness, but with that fear you couldn't argue. It went too deep. You were too mysteriously sure of its terror. You could only walk very fast and try to leave it behind you. loneliness fear hunger walking terror Jean Rhys
e65f7ed You have entered an abnormal, lonely, and unwelcome new world where you are nothing but an island of sadness. loneliness grief loss sadness isolation Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
2991ca8 Alone: for the first time I understood the terrible significance of that word. Alone without a witness, without anyone to speak to, without refuge. The breath in my body, the blood in my veins, all this hurly-burly in my head existed for nobody. solitude loneliness faith Simone de Beauvoir
32fc9f5 Thus it had come about that she had read far more fiction, and far more poetry, those two sanctuaries of the lonely, than most of her kind. loneliness poetry quote lonely John Fowles
d2e8459 "As always when he worked with this much concentration he began to feel a sense of introverting pressure. There was no way out once he was in, no genuine rest, no one to talk to who was capable of understanding the complexity (simplicity) of the problem or the approaches to a tentative solution. There came a time in every prolonged effort when he had a moment of near panic, or "terror in a lonely place," the original semantic content of the word. The lonely place was his own mind. As a mathematician he was free from subjection to reality, free to impose his ideas and designs on his own test environment. The only valid standard for his work, its critical point (zero or infinity), was the beauty it possessed, the deft strength of his mathematical reasoning. THe work's ultimate value was simply what it revealed about the nature of his intellect. What was at stake, in effect, was his own principle of intelligence or individual consciousness; his identity, in short. This was the infalling trap, the source of art's private involvement with obsession and despair, neither more nor less than the artist's self-containment, a mental state that led to storms of overwork and extended stretches of depression, that brought on indifference to life and at times the need to regurgitate it, to seek the level of expelled matter. Of course, the sense at the end of a serious effort, if the end is reached successfully, is one of lyrical exhilaration. There is air to breathe and a place to stand. The work gradually reveals its attachment to the charged particles of other minds, men now historical, the rediscovered dead; to the main structure of mathematical thought; perhaps even to reality itself, the so-called sum of things. It is possible to stand in time's pinewood dust and admire one's own veronicas and pavanes." loneliness mind depression despair obsession art-creation concentration thought mental-health Don DeLillo
fb3827e Underwater, we're drowning victims, struggling over and under each others' bodies. But above, we bob with the tide,undercurrents pulling us just far enough apart ,so that we're drifting parallel but not together. loneliness love Craig Thompson
72c2b68 How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off? How long can I be Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand, Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon? The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow Lap at my back ineluctably. How shall it soften them, this little lullaby? loneliness sorrow poetry strength fortitude Sylvia Plath
1469cce All human beings are alone. No other person will completely feel like we do, think like we do, act like we do. Each of us is unique, and our aloneness is the other side of our uniqueness. The question is whether we let our aloneness become loneliness or whether we allow it to lead us into solitude. Loneliness is painful; solitude is peaceful. Loneliness makes us cling to others in desperation; solitude allows us to respect others in their uniqueness and create community. Letting our aloneness grow into solitude and not into loneliness is a lifelong struggle. It requires conscious choices about whom to be with, what to study, how to pray, and when we ask for counsel. But wise choices will help us to find the solitude where our hearts can grow in love. solitude loneliness relationships isolation Henri J.M. Nouwen
1be3033 Outside the hospital, I squinted in the harsh morning sunlight. I could hear birds chirping in the tree, but even though I searched for them, they remained hidden from me. loneliness emotional-exhaustion Nicholas Sparks
66736f6 There were not words enough in the English language, nor in any language, to make his attitude and conduct intelligible to them. loneliness intelligence isolation Jack London
3617c2e A number of years ago I had some experience with being alone. For two succeeding years I was alone each winter for eight months at a stretch in the Sierra Nevada mountains on Lake Tahoe. I was the caretaker on a summer estate during the winter months when it was snowed in. And I made some observations then. As time went on I found that my reactions thickened. Ordinarily I am a whistler. I stopped whistling. I stopped conversing with my dogs, and I believe that the subtleties of feeling began to disappear until finally I was on a pleasure-pain basis. Then it occurred to me that the delicate shades of feeling, of reaction, are the result of communication, and without such communication they tend to disappear. A man with nothing to say has no words. Can its reverse be true- a man who has no one to say anything to has no words as he has no need for words? ... Only through imitation do we develop toward originality. winter solitude loneliness travels-with-charley companionship isolation John Steinbeck
81f63b5 To be insular is to be independent. But it is also to be alone. loneliness independence Peter Ackroyd
6a905c4 For I'm afraid of loneliness; shiveringly, terribly afraid. I don't mean the ordinary physical loneliness, for here I am, deliberately travelled away from London to get to it, to its spaciousness and healing. I mean that awful loneliness of spirit that is the ultimate tragedy of life. When you've got to that, really reached it, without hope, without escape, you die. You just can't bear it, and you die. solitude loneliness escape spirit fear hope london soul Elizabeth von Arnim
608aee9 Squiffy, have you ever felt a sort of strange emptiness in the heart? A sort of aching void of the soul?' 'Oh, rather!' 'What do you do about it?' 'I generally take a couple of cocktails. loneliness depression sorrow humor desolation comedy alcohol-addiction emptiness P.G. Wodehouse
98faae8 You know how it is. You feel a little different because other people have two parents, even if they're divorced. It's like you grow up knowing that you're missing something important that everyone else has, but you don't know exactly what it is. I remember hearing my friends talking about how their fathers wouldn't let them stay out late or didn't like their boyfriends. It used to make me so angry because they didn't even realize what they had. Do you know what I mean? loneliness fatherless motherless parentless emptyness missing-something different Nicholas Sparks
46df483 Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can go around making themselves and everyone else miserable. He had never found happiness dull. It always seemed more exciting than any other thing and capable of as great intensity as sorrow to those people who were capable of having it. This may not be true but he had believed it to be true for a long time and this summer they had experienced happiness for a month now and, already, in the nights, he was lonely for it before it had ever gone away. loneliness Ernest Hemingway
0856dc4 The misery of other people is only an abstraction [...] something that can be sympathized with only by drawing from one's own experiences. But as it stands, true empathy remains impossible. And so long as it is, people will continue to suffer the pressure of their seemingly singular existence. experiences loneliness misery Nicole Krauss
427e2d5 Is this how it is for a species that senses it is going extinct? Is there a feeling of loneliness, or unease, each morning, upon awakening? loneliness humanity Rick Bass
1e9577f "The truth is "#9dream" is a descendant of "Norwegian Wood". Both are ghost stories. "She" in "Norwegian Wood" curses you with loneliness. The "Two spirits dancing so strange" in "#9dream" bless you with harmony. But people prefer loneliness to harmony." loneliness norwegian-wood David Mitchell
e935d54 Graff had isolated Ender to make him struggle. To make him prove, not that he was competent, but that he was far better than everyone else. That was the only way he could win respect and friendship. It made him a better soldier then he would ever have been otherwise. It also made him lonely, afraid, angry, untrusting. And maybe those traits, too, made him a better soldier. loneliness graff ender-wiggin soldier isolation resentment Orson Scott Card
cde084b ...He was wrong about the sadness though: far better to have it when you're young. A sad pretty girl inspires the urge to console, unlike a sad old crone. unhappiness loneliness youth beauty sadness Margaret Atwood
35af85c Am I creating my own isolation? It seems to me that most of my acts are acts of integrity. So much takes place within me each day that by comparison I find a paucity, a stinginess, a silence in people which drives me to excess. loneliness isolation Anaïs Nin
6e4fce2 At that time I was only twenty-four years old. My life then was already gloomy, disorderly, and solitary to the point of savagery. loneliness solitary savagery lonely Fyodor Dostoyevsky
99fdc23 We have talked about Suzy and about her last days, but it's as if our lives stopped then and there. If I say anything to him about feeling lonesome, he goes outside and does some little chore. I can't tell if he is secretly blaming me, or himself, or just too full of pain to talk. That was the one thing we could always do together. I wish for the old days. I wish for the struggling days and the days of Geronimo, and the days of birthing Charlie with no one but Jack to help me. How happy and in love we were then. I want to be in love again, but all I feel is darkness and shadows. Everything is changed and different loneliness marriage depression death sadness life Nancy E. Turner
b480571 "Ged saw all these things from outside and apart, alone, and his heart was very heavy in him, though he would not admit to himself that he was sad. As night fell he still lingered in the streets, reluctant to go back to the inn. He heard a man and a girl talking together merrily as they came down the street past him towards the town square, and all at once he turned, for he knew the man's voice. He followed and caught up with the pair, coming up beside them in the late twilight lit only by distant lantern-gleams. The girl stepped back, but the man stared at him and then flung up the staff he carried, holding it between them as a barrier to ward off the threat or act of evil. And that was somewhat more than Ged could bear. His voice shook a little as he said, "I thought you would know me, Vetch." Even then Vetch hesitated for a moment. "I do know you," he said, and lowered the staff and took Ged's hand and hugged him round the shoulders-" I do know you! Welcome, my friend, welcome! What a sorry greeting I gave you, as if you were a ghost coming up from behind- and I have waited for you to come, and looked for you-" solitude loneliness welcome recognition Ursula K. Le Guin
f874aa2 "I, for instance, was triumphant over everyone; everyone, of course, was in dust and ashes, and was forced spontaneously to recognise my superiority, and I forgave them all. I was a poet and a grand gentleman, I fell in love; I came in for countless millions and immediately devoted them to humanity, and at the same time I confessed before all the people my shameful deeds, which, of course, were not merely shameful, but had in them much that was "sublime and beautiful" something in the Manfred style. Everyone would kiss me and weep (what idiots they would be if they did not), while I should go barefoot and hungry preaching new ideas and fighting a victorious Austerlitz against the obscurantists. Then the band would play a march, an amnesty would be declared, the Pope would agree to retire from Rome to Brazil; then there would be a ball for the whole of Italy at the Villa Borghese on the shores of Lake Como, Lake Como being for that purpose transferred to the neighbourhood of Rome; then would come a scene in the bushes, and so on, and so on -- as though you did not know all about it?" -- loneliness fantasies Fyodor Dostoyevsky
0e60048 I invented adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some way. loneliness life invention Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1f6e4f0 Summer would not last forever; he knew it and Ronia knew it. But now they began to live as if it would, and as far as possible they pushed away all painful thoughts of winter. loneliness happiness denial summer Astrid Lindgren
fb293ce But this gives no proper idea of my feelings at all; and no one that has not lived such a retired stationary life as mine, can possibly imagine what they were: hardly even if he has known what it is to awake some morning, and find himself in Port Nelson, in New Zealand, with a world of waters between himself and all that knew him. loneliness sad Anne Brontë
ab30fc7 Oh, how good it is to be with someone, sometimes. loneliness happiness love hiroshima-mon-amour marguerite-duras content couple longing-for-love Marguerite Duras
0e7e577 I look for places like me: big, hollow, forgotten by almost everyone. loneliness sadness emptiness empty Jodi Picoult
765a3f5 He needed her so badly, to reassure himself of his own existence, that he never comprehended the desperation in her dazzling, permanent smile, the terror in the brightness with which she faced the world, or the reasons why she hid when she couldn't manage to beam... every moment she spent in the world was full of panic, so she smiled and smiled and maybe once a week she locked the door and shook and felt like a husk, like an empty peanut-shell, a monkey without a nut. loneliness sadness masks Salman Rushdie
d7ed884 "A woman's voice answered, "Hello?" Walter cried back at her, "Hello, oh Lord, hello!" "This is a recording," recited the woman's voice. "Miss Helen Arasumian is not home. Will you leave a message on the wire spool so she may call you when she returns? Hello? This is a recording. Miss Helen Arasumian is not home. Will you leave a message -" He hung up. He sat with his mouth twitching. On second thought he redialed that number. "When Miss Helen Arasumian comes home," he said, "tell her to go to hell." loneliness humor Ray Bradbury
cd7250a I purely came over because I thought you looked extremely lonely. You have an extremely sensitive face. loneliness J.D. Salinger
a55d3e9 No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone. loneliness Mitch Albom
ab2cd27 It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die before him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had outlived her husband. Besides, wives should live longer than husbands. Women were more complete inside themselves. They were also better at living in their children. They were never as solitary as a man alone. loneliness Orson Scott Card
5dd5c14 "Happy?" asked Aquilina, with dreadful look, and a smile full of pity and terror. "Ah, you do not know what it is to be condemned to a life of pleasure." loneliness relationships sorrow sadness happiness love pleasure Honoré de Balzac
ae13fc5 How was it possible to be with someone and yet feel so utterly alone? How was it possible to be with someone as wonderful, warm and kind as Andrew and yet still wonder if love would ever find you? loneliness Chris Manby
362a974 But he also knew that, as much as he wanted to aid and console the soldier, he wanted to be alone in his room with the night coming down and a book close by and pen and paper and the knowledge that the door would remain shut until the morning came and he would ne be disturbed. The gap between these two desires filled him with sadness and awe at the mystery of the self, the mystery of having a single consciousness, knowing merely its own bare feelings and experiencing singly and alone it own pain or fear or pleasure or complacency. loneliness self mystery Colm Tóibín
0375e5f At some point, loneliness become less a condition than a habit. In time, you stop looking at your phone wondering why you can't think of anyone to call, stop getting you hair cut, stop working out, stop thinking that tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life. Because tomorrow is today, and today is yerterday, and yesterday beat the shit out of you and brought you to your knees. The only way to stay sane is to stop hoping for something better. loneliness Jonathan Tropper
65c48f1 I thought about how often this was needed in everyday life. How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don't let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry. loneliness feelings everyday-life paint tears Mitch Albom
f279763 The sensation that for the world to exist with an object of such beauty in it--and for that object to be unattainable--was the very sweetest kind of pain imaginable. loneliness love desire John Boyne
d63d6d9 Isolated people, those who live alone, are always conscious of their condition in the homes of families. loneliness isolation Patrick McGrath
8bcd335 Despair was a private weakness she could not afford to indulge. loneliness strength Robin McKinley
1dbbb6c "I remember arriving by train in a small Swiss town. I had walked up a steep, cobblestoned street that offered a sweeping view of the village below and a lake, which, in the late afternoon light, was like a great cloudy opal. And I remember thinking, with a sense of mounting joy, that not a single soul knew where I was at that moment. No one could find me. No one could phone me. No one could see me who knew me by name. For someone whose childhood experiences had pounded home the Sartrian concept that hell, truly, is other people, that was an awesome moment. I knew, at least for an instant, that I was free. That feeling is one I've sought to find again and again. Often I've succeeded, other times, for no reason I can figure out, the feeling of elation and freedom degenerates into a profound loneliness and sense of bitter isolation. But there is still something about arriving in a strange or unexplored city, in Hong Kong or Paris or Sydney, wandering streets one has never walked before, in a place where, only against the most astronomical odds, would one encounter a familiar face. loneliness writing-life writing Lucy Taylor
7f1c87b Even a life raft is only supposed to get you from the sinking ship back to land, you were never intended to live in the life raft, to drift years on end, in sight of land but never close enough. loneliness sinking-ship homeless Nick Flynn
83f8ca7 She has that voraciousness about children. She swoops in on them. Even I, in public was a beloved child. She'd parade me into town, smiling and teasing me, tickling me as she spoke with people on the sidewalks. When we got home, she'd trail off to her room like an unfinished sentence, and I would sit outside with my face pressed against her door, and replay the day in my head, searching for clues to what I had done to displease her. I have one memory that catches in me like a nasty clump of blood. Marian was dead about two years, and my mother had a cluster of friends come over for afternoon drinks. For hours, the child was cooed over, smothered with red lipstick kisses, tidied up with tissues, then lipstick smacked again. I was suppose to be reading in my room, but I sat at the top of the stairs watching. My mother finally was handed the baby, and she cuddled it ferociously. Oh, how, wonderful it is to hold a baby again! Adora jiggled it on her knee, walked it around the rooms, whispered to it, and I looked down from above like a spiteful little god, the back of my hand placed against my face, imagining how it felt to be cheek to cheek with my mother. jealousy loneliness dysfunctional-mother human-accessory childhood-memory child mother Gillian Flynn
475af1f What had happened in these ten years for there suddenly be so much to say -- so much so pressing that it couldn't wait to be said? Everywhere I walked, somebody was approaching me talking on a phone and someone was behind me talking on a phone. Inside the cars, the drivers were on the phone. When I took a taxi, the cabbie was on the phone. For one who frequently went without talking to anyone for days at a time, I had to wonder what that had previously held them up had collapsed in people to make incessant talking into a telephone preferable to walking about under no one's surveillance, momentarily solitary, assimilating the streets through one's animal senses and thinking the myriad thoughts that the activities of a city inspire. For me it made the streets appear comic and the people ridiculous. And yet it seemed like a real tragedy, too. To eradicate the experience of separation must inevitably have a dramatic effect. What will the consequence be? You know you can reach the other person anytime, and if you can't, you get impatient--impatient and angry like a stupid little god. loneliness phones Philip Roth
c251e03 This Midwestern sky is the nakedest loneliest sky in America. To escape it, people live inside and underground. loneliness Walker Percy
d3bb3dc "When I reach the end of one row, I continue straight on away from the barn and the farm and the road. I walk until I come to a pile of hay bales and plop myself down. The sun is bright and the air is sharp. In the distance I hear the lowing of cows. It's so peaceful here. "Merry Christmas, " I whisper to myself. "Merry Christmas, Nate." loneliness sadness hope life cora nate peace Lisa Ann Sandell
12480de Confronted by too much emptiness, said Adam One, the brain invents. Loneliness creates company as thirst creates water. How many sailors have been wrecked in pursuit of islands that were merely a shimmering? loneliness Margaret Atwood
cb6ddc5 Estragon: I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Coloured they were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty. That's where we'll go, I used to say, that's where we'll go for our honeymoon. We'll swim. We'll be happy. loneliness love waiting-for-godot samuel-beckett Samuel Beckett
ffaba66 The rhythm of solitude, once so intimidating, began to feel comfortable. Aloneness, I was learning, does not have to equal loneliness. solitude loneliness learning comfortable John Grogan
d4df3f6 Wearing an antique bridal gown, the beautiful queen of the vampires sits all alone in her dark, high house under the eyes of the portraits of her demented and atrocious ancestors, each one of whom, through her, projects a baleful posthumous existence; she counts out the Tarot cards, ceaselessly construing a constellation of possibilities as if the random fall of the cards on the red plush tablecloth before her could precipitate her from her chill, shuttered room into a country of perpetual summer and obliterate the perennial sadness of a girl who is both death and the maiden. loneliness sadness the-bloody-chamber the-lady-of-the-house-of-love vampire Angela Carter
79dd8ff But he was absolutely alone. No one ever wrote to him. Visited him. Totally alone. And I believe the happiest man I have ever met. solitude loneliness John Fowles
6e2f12f 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. loneliness trust hope Jean Rhys
b7b9a5a No one ever said aloud any of the kinds of things he was so constantly thinking, because no one in the parish, not Alice, not Lady Higgs, not anybody, ever seemed to see the things he saw. If they thought as he did, if they saw what he did, they never mentioned it; and to have things which are precious to one eternally unmentioned makes one, he had long discovered, lonely. These August nights, for instance--quite remarkably and unusually beautiful, warm and velvety as he had never known them, ushered in each evening by the most astonishing variety of splendid sunsets--nobody had said a single word about them. They might have been February ones, for all the notice they got. Sometimes he climbed up to the top of Burdon Down towards evening, and stood staring in amazement at what looked like heaven let loose in flames over England; but always he stood alone, always there was no one but himself up there, and no one afterwards, when he descended from his heights, seemed to be aware that anything unusual had been going on. loneliness beauty appreciation-of-nature Elizabeth von Arnim
f9ebb97 One of the sicknesses of the twentieth century? I'll tell you the worst one. People can't stand to be alone. Can't tolerate it! So they go to the movies, get drive-in hamburgers, put their home telephone numbers in the crapsheets and say 'Please call me up!' It's sick. People hate their own company --- they cry when they see themselves in mirrors. It scares them, the way their faces look. Maybe that's a clue to the whole thing... loneliness Paul Theroux
d3d0b4e Someone speak to me. Call out to me and take me out. Please, please, I'm begging you, say something kind to me. Tell me I'm pretty, tell me I'm sweet. Invite me out for coffee, or more... Tell me that you want to spend the day with me and me alone. loneliness romance love Natsuo Kirino
6f7bda1 "El, you are telling me to run away with a man to become his mistress." "I am telling you to be happy. Even if it lasts only a little while. We must snatch what we can when we have the chance. Life is so very lonely when we don't." loneliness happiness life eleanor Jennifer Ashley
e173991 Yes it's me, I myself, what I turned out to be, (...) I'm the one here in myself, it's me. (...) Whatever I was, whatever I wasn't--it's all in what I am. Whatever I wanted, whatever I didn't want--all of this has shaped me. Whatever I loved, or stopped loving--in me it's the same nostalgia (Alvaro de Campos) loneliness self-knowledge life love nostalgia Fernando Pessoa
c55b215 Outside, under the marquee of the hotel, he stood a moment as he did each night beneath the marquee of the Hotel Hyperion, while he decided what direction to take, what to do. And suddenly, realizing it was not the Hotel Hyperion, that the circumstances were quite different, he felt loneliness spring up like a dark forest all around him. The odd thing was, he felt no impulse to hurry after her, to find her somehow. What would he have to offer her except the history of weakness, loneliness, and inadequacy, the decline and fall of himself? He himself was the core of the loneliness around him, and its core was inadequacy. He was inadequate even in love. loneliness history dark love offer inadequacy hurry forest fall weakness direction impulse decline Patricia Highsmith
8a2e5f1 "I know where I came from--but where did all you zombies come from? I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once--and you all went away. So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light. loneliness identity missing-something Robert A. Heinlein
daaff01 One by one they are being picked off around him: in his small circle of colleagues the ratio slowly grows top-heavy, more ghosts, more each winter, and fewer living... and with each one, he thinks he feels patterns on his cortex going dark, settling to sleep forever, parts of whoever he's been losing all definition, reverting to dumb chemistry... loneliness losing-yourself getting-older isolation failure Thomas Pynchon
1e18e88 I was ready to leave with every load, with every worthy individual of respectable appearance hiring a cab; but absolutely nobody invited me, not one; it was as if they had forgotten me, as if I was actually something alien to them! loneliness unwanted white-nights Fyodor Dostoyevsky
24004ce She turned and walked down the musty, dimly-lighted corridor, along a strip of carpeting that still clung together only out of sheer stubbornness of skeletal weave. Doors, dark, oblivious, inscrutable, sidling by; enough to give you the creeps just to look at them. All hope gone from them, and from those who passed in and out through them. Just one more row of stopped-up orifices in this giant honeycomb that was the city. Human beings shouldn't have to enter such doors, shouldn't have to stay behind them. No moon ever entered there, no stars, no anything at all. They were worse than the grave, for in the grave is absence of consciousness. And God, she reflected, ordered the grave, for all of us; but God didn't order such burrows in a third-class New York City hotel. loneliness death hopeless despair Cornell Woolrich
2cd672c Steve, on the other hand, has plenty of friends, but he wouldn't bleed for any of them, because he wouldn't trust them to bleed for him. In that way he's just as alone as me. loneliness loyalty Markus Zusak
df7e05b I'm here. I love you. I don't care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it - I will love you through that, as well. If you don't need the medication, I will love you, too. There's nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me. loneliness life love Elizabeth Gilbert
e014cf6 When we feel lonely we keep looking for a person or persons who can take our loneliness away. Our lonely hearts cry out, 'Please hold me, touch me, speak to me, pay attention to me.' But soon we discover that the person we expect to take our loneliness away cannot give us what we ask for. Often that person feels oppressed by our demands and runs away, leaving us in despair. As long as we approach another person from our loneliness, no mature human relationship can develop. Clinging to one another in loneliness is suffocating and eventually becomes destructive. For love to be possible we need the courage to create space between us and to trust that this space allows us to dance together. loneliness relationships Henri J.M. Nouwen
2e6cc27 Eccentrics with unseeing eyes glided through, savouring amid so much society their own particular loneliness and private sins and sorrows. loneliness eccentrics the-green-knight iris-murdoch sins sorrows society Iris Murdoch
9cd48bf Twice I'd come home as they were finishing, and, honestly, I cannot think of a lonelier sound on a Saturday night than one's roommate having a giant orgasm and then making an embarrassed sssh sound, realizing that maybe through her pleasure she'd heard the front door open and close. loneliness sex roommates Aimee Bender
4167e82 Among all the wisdom and facts I learned from Giannon, I also learned the loneliness of incarnation, in which there is inevitably a separation of souls because of the uniqueness of our faces and our experiences. And I learned also the moments when the current of my life joins the current of another life, and I can glimpse for a moment the one flowing body of water we all compose. loneliness life-lessons wisdom Kate Horsley
d9df290 It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love. It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. loneliness detachment lost wilderness Anne Morrow Lindbergh
d55d183 We isolated ourselves, because it hurt less. loneliness isolationism Jodi Picoult
e68542a The worst moments are when my entire family is in the same room. With the people I should love the most surrounding me, I feel the most alone. loneliness family lincoln Katie McGarry
3c2ef5b This change did not bring me into the community of the others, did not make me closer to anyone, but actually made me even lonelier. My reformation seemed to point in the direction of Demian, but even this was a distant fate. I did not know myself, for I was too deeply involved. It had begun with Beatrice, but for some time I had been living in such an unreal world with my paintings and my thoughts of Demian that I'd forgotten all about her, too. I could not have uttered a single word about my dreams and expectations, my inner change, to anyone, not even if I had wanted to. But how could I have wanted to? loneliness Hermann Hesse
caeec46 I've seen women-and men too, sometimes-as canna bear the sound of their own thoughts, and they maybe dinna make such good matches with those who can. solitude loneliness marriage Diana Gabaldon
c329b8b Isolation might be more hazardous than splendor. loneliness self-indulgence assumptions Barbara W. Tuchman
c304280 I had never liked, even feared a little, this wild reach of marsh and mud flats where everything seemed turned away from the land, looking off desperately toward the horizon as if in mute search for a sign of rescue. loneliness sadness environmental-sadness fen marsh landscape John Banville
3b6cbb9 The orange turns to dull bronze light and continues to show what it has shown all day long, but now it seems to show it without enthusiasm. Across those dry hills, within those little houses in the distance are people who've been there all day long, going about the business of the day, who now find nothing unusual or different in this strange darkening landscape, as we do. If we were to come upon them early in the day they might be curious about us and what we're here for. but now in the evening they'd just resent our presence. The workday is over. It's time for supper and family and relaxation and turning inward at home. We ride unnoticed down this empty highway through this strange country I've never seen before, and now a heavy feeling of isolation and loneliness becomes dominant and my spirits wane with the sun. loneliness desolation Robert M. Pirsig
a1a6d19 When I was a kid, I used to watch that show, sitting on the couch in my pajamas and wishing more than anything that one day I'd just change into this other person. I thought that would explain everything. You know, about why I felt so different. Then I'd find out that my mother was really an alien or that I'd been bitten by a radioactive spider as a baby and it would all be okay because I'd be able to fly and see through walls.. But it never happened. I just went on being me my whole life, until one day I realized that all those superheroes were doing was fighting themselves, and that getting to breathe underwater or shoot fire from your fingers didn't really make up for being screwed up in the first place. It was just the consolation prize - you got the great costume and the invisible jet for being a loser in everything else. loneliness depression michael-thomas-ford suicide-notes superhero sad Michael Thomas Ford
1737d49 And then, for an hour, he became aware of the strange life he was leading, of him doing lots of things which were only a game, of, though being happy and feeling joy at times, real life still passing him by and not touching him. As a ball-player plays with his balls, he played with his business-deals, with the people around him, watched them, found amusement in them; with his heart, with the source of his being, he was not with them. The source ran somewhere, far away from him, ran and ran invisibly, had nothing to do with his life any more. And at several times he suddenly became scared on account of such thoughts and wished that he would also be gifted with the ability to participate in all of this childlike-naive occupations of the daytime with passion and with his heart, really to live, really to act, really to enjoy and to live instead of just standing by as a spectator. loneliness Hermann Hesse
463f1f5 Darling, no one would ever dream of performing an operation on a child without testing it first. And no one in a thousand years would take a child's daemon away altogether! All that happens is a little cut, and then everything's peaceful. Forever! You see, your daemon's a wonderful friend and com panion when you're young, but at the age we call puberty, the age you're coming to very soon, darling, daemons bring all sort of troublesome thoughts and feelings, and that's what lets Dust in. A quick little operation before that, and you're never troubled again. And your daemon stays with you, only...just not connected. Like a... like a wonderful pet, if you like. The best pet in the world! Wouldn't you like that? (Marisa Coulter) loneliness grief sadness daemon miss-coulter dust Philip Pullman
9e60130 Ozi made me feel so known. He made love to my insides, filling desperate gaps and calming unbearably sensitive places. loneliness love Mohsin Hamid
5662935 Just slowly, among his growing riches, Siddhartha had assumed something of the childlike people's ways for himself, something of their childlikeness and of their fearfulness. And yet, he envied them, envied them just the more, the more similar he became to them. He envied them for the one thing that was missing from him and that they had, the importance they were able to attach to their lives, the amount of passion in their joys and fears, the fearful but sweet happiness of being constantly in love. These people were all of the time in love with themselves, with women, with their children, with honours or money, with plans or hopes. loneliness Hermann Hesse
7d9be3a I just want to serve and help people and be good to everybody, only it always goes wrong somehow--I think about suicide all the time, every bloody day I want to die and stop this torture, but I go crawling on . . . I'm so Christ-awful bloody lonely I could scream with it for hours on end. loneliness desperate rejected unlucky the-black-prince iris-murdoch selfless suicidal Iris Murdoch
3ff2978 Perhaps twenty minutes later he realized she had gone to sleep. He quietly removed his now stiff arm, then turned away. It must have woken her a little After a moment he felt her turn as well and lay a hand, instinctively, like a sleeping wife, across his hips; as if, in some dream, he was the one who escaped. sleep loneliness love john-fowles John Fowles
24cfcd4 Within perfect walls there is nothing worth protecting. There is, in fact, nothing. And so we exchange privacy for intimacy. loneliness privacy Max Barry
904c0e3 Man is a coward in space, for he is by himself. loneliness relationship crisis Richard Llewellyn
d93eae5 That's why; he's worried about how his life is turning out, and he's lonely, and lonely people are the bitterest of them all. loneliness depression Nick Hornby
cff6ec0 !Se sentia tan sola y abandonada! Un chile en nogada olvidado en una charola despues de un gran banquete no se sentiria peor que ella. loneliness cooking food soledad tristeza Laura Esquivel
a9f84fe "I'm not going anywhere," she told me that night. But until we are old ladies--a cypress age, a Sawtooth age--I will continue to link arms with her, in public, in private, in a panic of love." loneliness loss love sisters Karen Russell
c2f2699 It struck her that he might have told no one, not even his brothers, how he felt, and she thought how lonely that might have been for him. loneliness Colm Tóibín
d95c24f ...not to look back or feel sad about things, that home is wherever I am. loneliness sadness homesickness contentment home Donna Tartt
af343d1 "It is strange and cold. I can feel it through the box" said Miss Flower and she cried, "No one will understand us or know what we want. Oh no one will understand us again!" But Miss Happiness was more hopeful and more brave. "I think they will,"she said. "How will they?" "Because there will be some little girl who is clever and kind." "Will there be?" said Miss Flower longingly. "Yes." "Why will there be?" "Because there always has been," said Miss Happiness." loneliness homesickness Rumer Godden
ffc7eb0 With solitude, however, fervently it is desired and embraced, comes loneliness. T. H White, the author, offered advice to those in sadness -- learn something new. solitude loneliness Carolyn G. Heilbrun
ad61447 There's little back roads and little towns sometimes I never heard of them. I start to expect the gas station attendants to know me when I arrive. I get excited that I've been there before. I want them to welcome me. I'm disappointed when they don't. Something that I don't want to be true starts lookin' like it's al that's true only I don't know what it is. No. No. I need my marriage. I come here to tell you. I got to stay married. I'm lost without her. loneliness phil David Rabe
758d35e The supermarket is still open; it won't close till midnight. It is brilliantly bright. Its brightness offers sanctuary from loneliness and the dark. You could spend hours of your life here, in a state of suspended insecurity, meditating on the multiplicity of things to eat. Oh dear, there is so much! So many brands in shiny boxes, all of them promising you good appetite. Every article on the shelves cries out to you, take me, take me; and the mere competition of their appeals can make you imagine yourself wanted, even loved. But beware - when you get back to your empty room, you'll find that the false flattering elf of the advertisement has eluded you; what remains is only cardboard, cellophane and food. And you have lost the heart to be hungry. loneliness supermarts chrisopher-isherwood Christopher Isherwood
c457903 "Dad called it "enlightenment" but to me, it just felt lonely." loneliness family love wisdom fatherhood Ta-Nehisi Coates
c9b6d82 Na enxerga, Saraid dormia. Eile fazia o mesmo com os longos cabelos espalhados pela almofada como um rio de chamas escuras. Junto da fogueira, os homens de Pitnochie mantinham-se silenciosos, enrolados nos seus cobertores. Ninguem o ouvia; apenas as sombras. loneliness love faolan Juliet Marillier
48f8b4d Il dolore piu sincero si vive soltanto da soli. loneliness pain life Carlos Ruiz Zafón
615ce4e I leaned out the window to feel the night's deep blue, the same dark air that surrounded him in Genoa or Paris or wherever he was. I would give a great deal to know what he was thinking right at this moment. If a person could know for certain what the other person was thinking or doing, then loneliness might cease to exist in the world. loneliness humanity Susan Vreeland
6dcb0e7 She was such a solitary woman. A solitary woman who longed for one person to know her. I think I do know her now, but it is too late. understanding solitude loneliness relationships Jeanette Winterson
a213476 Siempre, a pesar de todo, habia deseado encontrar a un semejante: hombre, mujer, nino, no importaba. Sin la incesante influencia de las masas, el sexo perdia rapidamente importancia. En cambio, la soledad seguia en primera linea. solitude loneliness sex love human-extinction Richard Matheson
2b520d0 So be lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. loneliness inspirational human-experience Elizabeth Gilbert
e04f2a2 Then I thought of how my life at Ault was a series of interactions and avoidance of interactions in which I pretended not to mind that I was almost always by myself. I could not last for long this way, certainly not for the next three years; I'd been at Ault only seven months, and already, my loneliness felt physically exhausting. loneliness depression Curtis Sittenfeld
06b7371 Only the survivors of a death are truly left alone. The connections that made up their life--both the deep connections and the apparently (until they are broken) insignificant connections--have all vanished. loneliness grief death human-connection survivors Joan Didion
87e9d7c One of the problems with people in Chicago, she remembered, was that they were never lonely at the same time. loneliness Lorrie Moore
e563abb "I ask myself everyday what my life is doing to me and I realize I don't have anybody I can talk to." "You should have" said the Doctor "everybody should." loneliness Henning Mankell
9f7dce0 To draw me out, the therapist asks what I did for the holidays. When I tell him he says gently (he says everything gently), Sounds like that's one of the ways your loss has affected you: not wanting to be with other people. Hating to be with other people, I don't say. Terrified of being with other people. mourning solitude loneliness grief loss isolation Sigrid Nunez
ea3d59a Stranno e, che vsichki greshki sv'rshvat ednakvo, che vinagi gi povtariame i prod'lzhavame s novi nadezhdi. Tsiala noshch khapem ustni, kh'ltsame v'v v'zglavnitsata s bezpomoshchen gniav i tv'rdo se zaklevame da ostanem samotni, a shchom s'mne, podnasiame dushata si kato nezhen balon ot ts'fnalo glukharche na nasreshchnite vetrove na zhivota i te go roniat i raznasiat. Ala koito spasi samo edno malko pukhche i go vnese na zavet, toi e spasil tsialata si dusha. Tova e gorchiva rabota, no koito ne obr'shcha nezhnoto tsvete na dushata si k'm vetrovete na izpitaniiata, dori tsialoto da go spasi i da go prenese dokrai, toi ne mozhe da pochuvstva, che izobshcho niakoga go e imal. winter loneliness pain live life dandelion болка вятър глухарче изпитания плач самота спасение страх душа живот yugoslavia safe feel salvation save cry test flower sad soul Ivo Andrić
61ae801 When we are most alone is when we embrace another's loneliness. loneliness inspirational Mitch Albom
24bcc27 "I thought about how often this was needed in everyday life. How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don't let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry. Or how we feel a surge of love for a partner but we don't say anything because we're frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship. Morrie's approach was exactly the opposite. Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won't hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, "All right, it's just fear, I don't have to let it control me. I see it for what it is." Same for loneliness: you let go, let the tears flow, feel it completely--but eventually be able to say, "All right, that was my moment with loneliness. I'm not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I'm going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I'm going to experience them as well." loneliness feelings fear vulnerability Mitch Albom
086798f Lupita thought that people who didn't dance were selfish and lonely. loneliness Laura Esquivel
f8aad4c The dead are my dark matter, filling up impalpably the empty spaces of the world. loneliness loss John Banville
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