#isolation

I think, if you have enough inner resources, then you can live in isolation for long periods of time and not feel diminished by it. ↗

— Aung San Suu Kyi

#enough #feel #i #i think #inner

…he is unlike the other customers. They sense it too, and look at him with hard eyes, eyes like little metal studs pinned into the white faces of young men [...] In the hush his entrance creates, the excessive courtesy the weary woman behind the counter shows him amplifies his strangeness. He orders coffee quietly and studies the rim of the cup to steady the sliding in his stomach. He had thought, he had read, that from shore to shore all America was the same. He wonders, Is it just these people I’m outside or is it all America? ↗

— John Updike

#angstrom #inspirational #isolation #loneliness #outside

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 think isolation is one of the greatest problems, an ever-growing obstacle to political solidarity. ↗

— Elfriede Jelinek

#i #i think #isolation #obstacle #political

There's a real purity in New Zealand that doesn't exist in the states. It's actually not an easy thing to find in our world anymore. It's a unique place because it is so far away from the rest of the world. There is a sense of isolation and also being protected. ↗

— Elijah Wood

#also #anymore #away #because #being

Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into the room, and the wall closed up again. ↗

— E.M. Forster

#isolation #machine #science-fiction #experience

Our society is so fragmented, our family lives so sundered by physical and emotional distance, our friendships so sporadic, our intimacies so 'in-between' things and often so utilitarian, that there are few places where we can feel truly safe. ↗

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

#brokenness #despair #isolation #loneliness #society

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

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

A major determining factor by which a superior human can be isolated from his average counterparts is his very isolation—the degree to which he naturally removes himself from mass-media input and stimuli. You cannot be an elitist, a Magician, and be plugged into the system. ↗

— Anton Szandor LaVey

#magic #media #satanism #seclusion #solace