“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
“And when you love someone, seeing them sad also makes you sad.”
Source: It Ends with Us
“better to love something than nothing”
Source: Beautiful World, Where Are You
“It was not that he had never felt so alone in his life.
It was that this was the fist time he cared.”
Source: A Sanctuary for Soulden
“Far as we aim our signs to reach,
Far as we often make them reach,
Across the soul-from-soul abyss,
There is an aeon-limit set
Beyond which they are doomed to miss.
Two souls may be too widely met.
That sad-with-distance river beach
With mortal longing may beseech;
It cannot speak as far as this.”
“I needed to escape my loneliness. I needed comfort and companionship. I needed certainty and faith and stability. But the truth is that I can’t fix that all now. Instead, I made a commitment to noticing. I made it my job to seek the beauty around me; to witness the little magic shows of nature unveiling in hedgerows and verges and the changing of the seasons. By turning my attention outward and finding places and creatures to love, I found beauty to focus on. I had reasons to stay.”
Source: Your Life in Bloom: A Manual on Courage and Finding Your Path for When You Need it Most