#isolation

So he was always in the town at one place or another, drinking, knocking about with the men he knew. It really wearied him. He talked to barmaids, to almost any woman, but there was that dark, strained look in his eyes, as if he were hunting something. Everything seemed so different, so unreal. There seemed no reason why people should go along the street, and houses pile up in the daylight. There seemed no reason why these things should occupy the space, instead of leaving it empty. His friends talked to him: he heard the sounds, and he answered. But why there should be the noise of speech he could not understand. ↗

— D.H. Lawrence

#drinking #isolation #language #meaninglessness #suicide

I cite these events because I think they underline two very disturbing phenomena - the loss of U.S. international credibility, the growing U.S. international isolation. ↗

— Zbigniew Brzezinski

#cite #credibility #disturbing #events #growing

I fall in love with Paraíso. It’s like a giant playground where I’m never scolded for running around recklessly, where I’m almost overwhelmed with the amount of attention and love I receive from Mami’s family. In New York, I’m invisible. ↗

— Raquel Cepeda

#coming-of-age #family #home #identity #invisibility

Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#crime #impunity #isolation #rural-life #sherlock-holmes

...you are my Lady of Shalott lost in a dream of isolation - I care too much for you - I romanticize depression... ↗

— John Geddes

#isolation #romanticize #tennyson #unconditional-love #dreams

It is not queer, and both desolating and comforting, how, with all associations broken, one forms new ones, as a broken bone thickens in healing. ↗

— Wallace Stegner

#isolation #resilience #friendship

She liked to imagine that when she passed, the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was. Except when she was at work, no one knew where she was at any time of day and no one waited for her. It was immaculate anonymity. ↗

— Alice Sebold

#anonymity #inspirational #isolation #imagination

The fragility of love is what is most at stake here—humanity's most crucial three-word avowal is often uttered only to find itself suddenly embarrassing or orphaned or isolated or ill-timed—but strangely enough it can work better as a literal or reassuring statement than a transcendent or numinous or ecstatic one. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#humanity #isolation #love #love

He had been for many years, a quiet silent man, associating but little with other men, and used to companionship with his own thoughts. He had never known before the strength of the want in his heart for the frequent recognition of a nod, a look, a word; or the immense amount of relief that had been poured into it by drops through such small means. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#loneliness #sadness #solitude #men

We all grew up, those of us who took On the Road to heart. We came to cringe a little at our old favorite poet, concluding that God was likely never Pooh Bear, that sometimes New York and California could be just as isolated as our provincial hometown, and that grown men didn't run back and forth all the time bleeding soup and sympathy out of sucker women. But those are just details, really. We got what we needed, namely a passion for unlikely words, the willingness to improvise, a distrust of authority, and a sentimental attachment to a certain America.... ↗

— Sarah Vowell

#kerouac #modernism #on-the-road #men