#lines

Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#jodi #loneliness #loner #self #society

You think you know how this story is going to end, but you don't. ↗

— Christopher Moore

#opening-lines #christ

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. ↗

— George Orwell

#dystopia #first-sentence #opening-lines #day

There is the solitude of suffering, when you go through darkness that is lonely, intense, and terrible. Words become powerless to express your pain; what others hear from your words is so distant and different from what you are actually suffering. ↗

— John O'Donohue

#suffering #suffering

I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stunned by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, "Hi." They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word. ↗

— Augusten Burroughs

#lonliness #opportunity #risk #social-anxiety #opportunity

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars—on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places. ↗

— Robert Frost

#humans

For the way loneliness is worse when you return to it after a reprieve—like the soul’s version of putting on a wet bathing suit, clammy and miserable. ↗

— Laini Taylor

#loneliness #young-adult #fantasy

So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them. ↗

— Sylvia Plath

#lonliness #shyness #confidence

It was a pleasure to burn. ↗

— Ray Bradbury

#opening-lines #pleasure

[A]t bottom, and just in the deepest and most important things, we are unutterably alone, and for one person to be able to advise or even help another, a lot must happen, a lot must go well, a whole constellation of things must come right in order once to succeed. ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#solitude #poets