#lone

Was it so much to ask just to be left alone? ↗

— Wendelin Van Draanen

#life #life

This is what it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#loneliness #life

The applause was so loud and insistent that I had to respond with several encores. I was numb with happiness, when it was over, I knew that this alone must be my life and my world. ↗

— Leni Riefenstahl

#applause #encores #had #happiness #i

All these people moving through life, all around me, and no one, not a single person, knows what I'm going through. ↗

— Lee Thompson

#life #lonely #struggle #life

And if you couldn't be loved, the next best thing was to be let alone. ↗

— L.M. Montgomery

#hill #jane #lantern #love #love

Books that have become classics - books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal - always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay. ↗

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

#always #become #books #captains #classics

The fastest way for me to achieve self-improvement is with The Opponent Apparatus (my clone). ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#self-improvement #change

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community. ↗

— Dorothy Day

#loneliness #love #love

Lucian was beginning to get used to hearing her small observations at night. More than anything, he realized he liked her voice in the dark. It made him feel less lonely. ↗

— Melina Marchetta

#love #love

I know you adore Father, but he isn't the white knight you imagine him to be. He never was. True, he's charming and loving in his way. But he's selfish. He's a limited man determined to bring about his own end-" "But-" Tom grabs both my hands in his and gives them a small squeeze. "Gemma, you can't save him. Why can't you accept that?" I see my reflection on the surface of the Thames. My face is a watery outline, all blurred edges with nothing settled. "Because if I let go of that" - I swallow hard, once, twice - "then I have to accept that I am alone." The ship's horn howls again as it slips out toward sea. Tom's reflection appears beside mine, just as uncertain. "We're every one of us alone in this world, Gemma." He doesn't say it bitterly. "But you have company, if you want. ↗

— Libba Bray

#gemma-doyle #imagination