Best loneliness & writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“I had to learn compassion. Had to learn what it felt like to hate, and to forgive and to love and be loved. And to lose people close to me. Had to feel deep loneliness and sorrow. And then I could write.”

People Feels Writing Hate Felt Loses Compassion Loneliness Sorrow Forgiving

Author:Louise Penny

“Writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy and freedom.”

Writing Loneliness Advantage Privacy Occupation Solitary Autonomy Hazards

Author:Joyce Carol Oates

“I write because I want to end my loneliness. Books make people less alone. That, before and after everything else, is what books do. They show us that conversations are possible across distances.”

People Want Writing Book Ends Shows Loneliness Conversation Distance Before And After

Author:Jonathan Safran Foer

“My greatest affliction... is perhaps the major theme of my writings, the affliction of loneliness that follows me like a shadow, a very ponderous shadow too heavy to drag after me all of my days and nights.”

Writing Night Loneliness Majors Shadow Heavy Theme Drag Affliction Day And Night Follow Me

Book:Memoirs

Source: Memoirs

“My books are based on the "what if" principle. "What if you became invisible?" or "What if you did change into your mother for one day?" I then take it from there. Each book takes several months in the long process of writing, rewriting, writing, rewriting, and each has its own set of problems. The one thing I dislike about the writing process is the sometimes-loneliness of it all. Readers only get to see the glamour part of a bound book, not some of the agonizing moments one has while constructing it.”

“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.”

World Writing Persons Self Humanity Rooms Company Virtue Written Loneliness Solitude Conversation Empty Letters Assuming Prime Telephones My Thoughts Imaginative Immediacy Empty Rooms

Author:Vivian Gornick

“When I'm writing, I like to travel alone. If you really want to find out about a place, you need to be as free as possible to be spontaneous. You also need to be lonely, because loneliness is a great teacher, too.”

Ifs Want Needs Writing Teacher Loneliness Lonely Spontaneous Great Teacher Be Spontaneous

Author:Paul Theroux

“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.”

Way Writing Character Past Company Loneliness Scene Lonely Finding Yourself Our Past Your Past

Book:A Year of Writing Dangerously: 365 Days of Inspiration and Encouragement

Source: A Year of Writing Dangerously: 365 Days of Inspiration and Encouragement

“The loneliness of writing is that you baffle your friends and change the lives of strangers.”

Writing Loneliness Stranger

Author:Richard Powers

“I am learning to see loneliness as a seed that, when planted deep enough, can grow into writing that goes back out into the world.”

World Writing Enough Grows Loneliness Seeds

Book:Dakota: A Spiritual Geography

Source: Dakota: A Spiritual Geography

“Loneliness is just a thing that I'm not personally interested in. So far, it hasn't been on my docket of things to write about.”

Writing Loneliness

Author:Dave Eggers

“I think we often write because we feel a loneliness, and people read for the same reason, and then they come away feeling a little less lonely.”

People Thinking Feels Writing Littles Reason Feelings Loneliness Lonely

Author:Amy Tan

“I wish other people would write about loneliness more. It's hard to remember that it's not personal. We live in a world that is built to make people lonely... It's difficult to remember that your loneliness is not really about you and everyone has it.”

People World Writing Hard Remember Wish Difficult Loneliness Built Lonely

Author:Jessa Crispin

“I think we tend to write more uplifting and vibrant music when we're in bleak and lonely surroundings. I think it's because you're channeling your loneliness in a way that you're trying to escape to your situation.”

Thinking Writing Trying Situation Loneliness Lonely Uplifting Bleak

Author:Ed MacFarlane

“I love to write when I feel like everybody else is asleep and when I feel like the world is kind of empty in some ways. I find, oddly enough, that I write about loneliness and isolation a lot.”

World Writing Kind Enough Loneliness Empty Isolation

Author:Dan Chaon

“You write a story about loneliness, and you grab them all because everybody's an expert on that one.”

Writing Stories Loneliness Experts Being Alone

Author:Theodore Sturgeon

“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”

Writing Creativity Loneliness Cold Solitude Oneself Introspection Abyss Being Alone Descent

Author:Franz Kafka

“Mr. Franzen said he and Mr. Wallace, over years of letters and conversations about the ethical role of the novelist, had come to the joint conclusion that the purpose of writing fiction was “a way out of loneliness.” (NY Times article on the memorial service of David Foster Wallace.)”

Way Writing Years Said Purpose Fiction Roles Loneliness Conversation Letters Conclusion Novelists Ethical Articles Joints Memorial Writing Fiction Memorial Service Purpose Of Writing

Author:Jonathan Franzen

“I am writing this book because we're all going to die - In the loneliness of my own life, my father dead, my brother dead, my mother faraway, my sister and my wife far away, nothing here but my own tragic hands that once were guarded by a world, a sweet attention, that now are left to guide and disappear their own way into the common dark of all our deaths, sleeping in me raw bed, alone and stupid: with just this one pride and consolation: my broke heart in the general despair and opened up inwards to the Lord, I made a supplication in this dream”

Source: Visions of Cody

“Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.... For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”

Ifs Writing Doe Enough Faces Doubt Loneliness Organization Eternity Each Day Good Enough

Book:The Snows of Kilimanjaro: A Full-length Play

Source: The Snows of Kilimanjaro: A Full-length Play

“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.”

Men Want Writing Book Enjoy Difficult Work Loneliness Succeed Mad Selfish Greedy Good Book Be A Man Unselfish Many Friends Being Selfish

Author:Simone de Beauvoir

“Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.”

World Writing Book Memories Cutting Loneliness Lonely Obsession Being Alone Writing A Book Good Memories Submerged

Author:Mario Vargas Llosa

“Writing is an antidote for loneliness.”

Writing Loneliness Being Alone Antidote Being Lonely

Author:Steven Berkoff

“A writer needs loneliness, and he gets his share of it. He needs love, and he gets shared and also unshared love. He needs friendship. In fact, he needs the universe. To be a writer is, in a sense, to be a day-dreamer - to be living a kind of double life.”

Needs Writing Kind Facts Universe Share Loneliness Dreamer Need Love Double Life

Author:Jorge Luis Borges

“The purpose of writing is both to keep up with life and to run ahead of it. I am little comfort to myself, although I am the only comfort I have, excepting perhaps streets, clouds, the sun, the faces and voices of kids and the aged, and similar accidents of beauty, innocence, truth and loneliness.”

Writing Littles Running Kids Faces Purpose Voice Sun Streets Loneliness Comfort Clouds Accidents Innocence Purpose Of Writing

Author:William Saroyan

“My loneliness...still comes over me sometimes...It's a liminal, lost sensation of having wandered wide, endless boulevards, among rows of orange trees, winter butterflies, seasons reversed and out of order, dogs barking from behind fences meant to keep out intruders. It's not the place that impoverishes me but I who bring my own sense of poverty, of loss, to the place. It's a sense of near nothingness, as though I were not so much a blank slate as an erased chalkboard, still bearing illegible smudges of smoothed-over writing.”

“The writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated loneliness, and a sense of local and global distress. The square, overpopulation, the bourgeois, the bomb and the cocktail party are variously identified as sources of the grudge. There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.”

“I rail against writers who talk about the loneliness of it all — what do they want, a crowd looking over their typewriters? Or those who talk about having to stare at a blank page — do they want someone to write on it?”

Want Writing Loneliness Pages Crowds Staring Blank Typewriters Rail Blank Pages

Author:Wilfrid Sheed

“If you are destined to become a writer, you can't help it. If you can help it, you aren't destined to become a writer. The frustrations and disappointments, not even to mention the unspeakable loneliness, are too unbearable for anyone who doesn't have a deep sense of being unable to avoid writing.”

Ifs Writing Helping Loneliness Disappointment Frustration Destined Unbearable Unspeakable

Author:Donald Harington

“You don't have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness ... has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I'm going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me.”

Thinking World Writing Hard Dies Realizing Loneliness Recognition Dread Angst

Author:David Foster Wallace

“Writing fiction is a solitary occupation but not really a lonely one. The writer's head is mobbed with characters, images and language, making the creative process something like eavesdropping at a party for which you've had the fun of drawing up the guest list. Loneliness usually doesn't set in until the work is finished, and all the partygoers and their imagined universe have disappeared.”

Writing Character Universe Language Fun Process Party Fiction Creative Loneliness Lonely Finished Drawing Lists Occupation Guests Creative Process Solitary Writing Fiction Eavesdropping

Author:Hilma Wolitzer

“I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen.”

People Writing Made Loneliness Essentials Aquariums

Book:Carson McCullers: Stories, Plays & Other Writings

Source: Carson McCullers: Stories, Plays & Other Writings

“Most of the writers I know are weird hybrids. There's a strong streak of egomania coupled with extreme shyness. Writing's kind of like exhibitionism in private. And there's also a strange loneliness, and a desire to have some kind of conversation with people, but not a real great ability to do it in person.”

People Knows Writing Kind Persons Real Desire Strong Ability Loneliness Strange Conversation Extremes Shyness Streaks Hybrid Exhibitionism Egomania

Author:David Foster Wallace

“Loneliness is necessary for pure poetry. When someone intrudes into the poet's life (and any sudden personal contact, whether in the bed or in the heart, is an intrusion) the poet loses his or her balance for a moment, slips into being what he or she is, uses his or her poetry as one would use money or sympathy. The person who writes the poetry emerges, tentatively, like a hermit crab from a conch shell. The poet, for that instant, ceases to be a dead person.”

Writing Heart Persons Moments Use Poetry Loses Loneliness Poet Balance Pure Bed Cease Contact Instant Slips Shells Intrusion Hermits Crabs Hermit Crabs

Author:Jack Spicer

“Somebody who had read Lila asked me, ‘Why do you write about the problem of loneliness?’ I said: ‘It’s not a problem. It’s a condition. It’s a passion of a kind. It’s not a problem. I think that people make it a problem by interpreting it that way.’”

People Thinking Way Writing Kind Said Problem Passion Conditions Loneliness Interpreting

Author:Marilynne Robinson

“If you write fiction, you're by yourself. There are certain advantages to that in that you don't have to explain anything to anybody. But when you get in with others who share the loneliness of the whole enterprise, you're not lonely anymore.”

Ifs Writing Whole Certain Fiction Share Loneliness Advantage Lonely Enterprise

Author:Denis Johnson

“A writer is essentially a man who does not resign himself to loneliness.”

Men Writing Doe Loneliness

Author:Francois Mauriac

“The most important thing a writer can have [is] the ability to live with the constant loneliness and a strong sense of revulsion for the banalities of everyday socializing.”

Writing Important Strong Ability Loneliness Important Things Constant Everyday Banality Socializing Revulsion

Book:Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

Source: Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“Why do I write? It's not that I want people to think I am smart, or even that I am a good writer. I write because I want to end my loneliness.”

People Thinking Want Writing Ends Loneliness Smart Good Writers

Author:Jonathan Safran Foer

“Ho talmente riempito la mia riserva di giorni e maschere che adesso posso e devo passare gli anni a pescare, a tirar su mostri dagli occhi di perla, coriacei, squamosi e con barbe marine, sommersi da lungo tempo nel mar dei Sargassi della mia immaginazione.”

Writing Imagination Loneliness Depression

Book:The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“When I was younger, I think what I wanted was the travel the world, to lead a glamorous life, to be celebrated for my work, to marry a great intellectual, to reject everything I had been raised with, to cut myself off from the narrow world. I feel very embarrassed by all that now, but I was lonely and unhappy, and I didn't understand that these feelings were ordinary, that there was nothing singular about my loneliness, my unhappiness. Maybe if I had understood that, as I think I do now, at least a little bit, I would never have written those books, I would never have become this person. I don't know. I know that I couldn't write them again, or feel the way I felt about myself at that time. It was important to me then to prove that I was a special person. And in my attempt to prove it, I made it true. Only afterwards, when I had received the money and acclaim which I believed I deserved, did I understand that it was not possible for anyone to deserve these things, and by then it was too late. I had already become the person I had once longed to be, and now energetically despised.”

Writing Loneliness Fame Unhappiness Individualism

Book:Beautiful World, Where Are You

Source: Beautiful World, Where Are You

“I am grateful that you, journal, can look at me without closing your covers. Sometimes, that’s all I do: open and close you, open and close, all afternoon on my bed, expecting you to shut on me, but you never do.”

Writing Friendship Sadness Loneliness Alienation Sad Quotes Being Alone The Goodbye Song Diary Journals

Book:The Goodbye Song

Source: The Goodbye Song

“There will always be more exciting things. Casinos will blink with avenues of exhilaration and offers to be devilish. The shelf of alcohol behind the bar looks like it may have a good read for you. A Chinese restaurant will buzz with customers and ticket orders. A booming concert may scream it has an extra spot, with strobe lights to hide your human. Partying people do not look like people who weep. You’ll think literature has no relevance to them. But eventually, the light will die down and the world will need to return home again. The fire will give out and the coals will glow and when the rising smoke clouds our vision, we will look for what we need: hearth. And there, the ignored is seen again. Asked for. There are exciting days, but the moment our flames die and we shiver honestly in our freezing universe, we will return to our homes, coming to what we need to, like mothers, like old love poems, like stringed instruments, like heroes.”

Writing Art Romance Literature Creativity Sadness Loneliness Writers Writers On Writing The Goodbye Song

Book:The Goodbye Song

Source: The Goodbye Song

“A person whom writes begins by putting down what they know about loneliness, shame, love, and heartache. In writing fully, they discover many other aspects of themselves that they never suspected including doubts, beliefs, ironies, and farcicalities.”

Source: Dead Toad Scrolls

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Loneliness Quotes