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Loneliness Quotes

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Loneliness Quotes

“The telephone conversation is, by its very nature, reactive, not reflective. Immediacy is its prime virtue. ... The letter, written in absorbed solitude, is an act of faith: it assumes the presence of humanity: world and self are generated from within: loneliness is courted, not feared. To write a letter is to be alone with my thoughts in the conjured presence of another person. I keep myself imaginative company. I occupy the empty room.”

“I think that part of being human is being alone, and being lonely. I think one of the stresses on a lot of our friendships is that we require the people we love to take away that loneliness. and they really can't. And so, when we still feel lonely, even in the company of people we love, we become angry with them because they don't do what we think they're supposed to. Which is really something that they can't do for us.”

“Writing can be a lonely business. But gradually your characters, or the scenes and peopl from your past, begin to rise up around you, and you find yourself writing your way out of loneliness, writing into your own company.”

“When I left you, you were already more beautiful than anything I dared to dream. In our years apart, my imaginings did their best to improve on your perfection. At night, your face was forever behind my eyes. And now I see that that vision who kept me company in my loneliness was a hag compared to the beauty now before me.”

“The numbing mind-ream of knowing you're alone not because people won't accept you but because you find so little worth accepting. An imposed solitude is better than simply tolerating your company in waiting for something better. So loneliness is not such a terrible thing when you consider that the alternative to thought provoking solace is to be surrounded only by remindings of why that solitude is preferable.”

“… that sour blend of loneliness and lust for recognition, shyness and extravagance, deep insecurity and self-intoxicated egomania, that drives poets and writers out of their rooms to seek each other out, to rub shoulders with one another, bully, joke, condescend, feel each other, lay a hand on a shoulder or an arm round a waist, to chat and argue with little nudges, to spy a little, sniff out what is cooking in other pots, flatter, disagree, collude, be right, take offence, apologise, make amends, avoid each other, and seek each other’s company again.”

“Most of the world's great souls have been lonely. Loneliness seems to be one price the saint must pay for his saintliness... Always remember: you cannot carry a cross in company. Though a man were surrounded by a vast crowd, his cross is his alone and his carrying of it marks him as a man apart. Society has turned against him; otherwise he would have no cross. No one is a friend to the man with a cross.”

“It’s like ... I’m sitting on a chair with my hands resting on my legs, palms turned open to the sky. I have so little in me, but I would give you whatever I can. just … stay? a little? hold my hand? tell me something. Loneliness is so hard when you’re left in it.”