Given enough time, you could convince yourself that loneliness was something better, that it was solitude, the ideal condition for reflection, even a kind of freedom. Once you were thus convinced, you were foolish to open the door and let anyone in, not all the way in. You risked the hard-won equilibrium, that tranquility that you called peace
Companionship is a foreign concept to some people. They fear it as much as the majority of people fear loneliness.
there is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear, and almost everyone has hours when he would gladly exchange it for any kind of sociability, however trivial or cheap, for the tiniest outward agreement with the first person who comes along....
I decided that maybe we left each other alone too much. Leaving each other alone was killing us.
Not belonging is a terrible feeling. It feels awkward and it hurts, as if you were wearing someone else's shoes.
When loneliness is a constant state of being, it harkens back to a childhood wherein neglect and abandonment were the landscape of life.
You're too far for my hands to hold you, but too near for my heart to love you.
What's a rainy day without some delicious coffee-flavoured loneliness?
He spoke of human solitude, about the intrinsic loneliness of a sophisticated mind, one that is capable of reason and poetry but which grasps at straws when it comes to understanding another, a mind aware of the impossibility of absolute understanding. The difficulty of having a mind that understands that it will always be misunderstood.
There's so much I should say, so many things I should tell him, but in the end I tell him nothing. I cut a line and my losses, and I light a cigarette.
It was sadness, lostness, and the worst thing about it was the way it seemed like a default—like it was there all the time, and all her other expressions were just an array of masks she used to cover it up.
My sleep wasn't peaceful, though. I have the sense of emerging from a world of dark, haunted places where I traveled alone.
I am jealous of anyone who can make other people care so much.
I can wade Grief— Whole Pools of it— I'm used to that— But the least push of Joy Breaks up my feet— And I tip—drunken— Let no Pebble—smile— 'Twas the New Liquor— That was all!
I wished a companion to lie near me in the starlight, silent and not moving, but ever within touch. For there is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect.
Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.
Like any / unloved thing, I don’t know if I’m real / when I’m not being touched.
there's no clarity. there was never meant to be clarity.
When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death - ourselves.
Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.