“Loneliness if often exacerbated by a perception that one is lonely while everyone else is connected. It's exaggerated by a sensation of being outside something that others seem to be in on: a family, a couple, a friendship, a joke.
Perhaps now we can learn how flawed that kind of thinking is, because loneliness is one of the most universal things any person can feel.”
Source: Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness
“We are unutterably alone, essentially, especially in the things most intimate and most important to us.”
Source: Letters to a Young Poet
“G-R-A-C-E, GRACE, is an acronym for how an individual can take care of their social body, even during periods of isolation, when the love network is powered down and we are particularly susceptible to the dangers of loneliness. GRACE stands for gratitude, reciprocity, altruism, choice, and enjoyment.”
Source: Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection
“It’s because people have aspirations and ambitions that solitude wears on them. If you don’t have a damn about what the rest of the world is up to, you can be alone for a hundred years- a thousand years- with no difficulty whatsoever. At least, you can if you don’t let criticism bother you.”
Source: Otogizōshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu
“Grief was a loneliness that felt like a planet.”
Source: Notes on an Execution
“The big alone," he said. "That's all any of us has in the end. Nothing can protect us from it, not careers or children or spouses or money or lovers.”
Source: I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories
“Books offered me a gauzy version of reality and I stepped hungrily into it. I inhabited an in-between space of terraced streets and bridges laced with lines from novels and iconic film stills. Art layered another world over my real, perceived one and gave me a calm, quiet feeling inside.”
“Surrounded by people it is very easy to feel alone. Surrounded by penguins, less so.”
Source: Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the End of the World
“Loneliness is by no means a wholly worthless experience, but rather one that cuts right to the heart of what we value and what we need”
Source: The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone
“I should like to record that as I manipulated the peeling lacquer chopsticks to eat my jelly, I felt unbearably lonely.”
Source: No Longer Human