#loneliness

A lonely, quiet person has observations and experiences that are at once both more indistinct and more penetrating than those of one more gregarious; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. . . . Loneliness fosters that which is original, daringly and bewilderingly beautiful, poetic. But loneliness also fosters that which is perverse, incongruous, absurd, forbidden. ↗

— Thomas Mann

#loneliness-quotes #beauty

After listening to a lot of these stories, I began to think that American loneliness is a completely different creature from anything we experience in this country, and it made me glad I was born Japanese. The type of loneliness where you need to keep struggling to accept a situation is fundamentally different from the sort you know you'll get through if you just hang in there. ↗

— Ryū Murakami

#japan #life #loneliness #struggle #experience

I was always holding onto people, and they were always leaving. ↗

— Lili St. Crow

#holding-on #leaving #left #loneliness #strange-angels

I couldn’t be with people and I didn’t want to be alone. Suddenly my perspective whooshed and I was far out in space, watching the world. I could see millions and millions of people, all slotted into their lives; then I could see me—I’d lost my place in the universe. It had closed up and there was nowhere for me to be. I was more lost than I had known it was possible for any human being to be. ↗

— Marian Keyes

#loneliness #sadness #family

Companionship is a foreign concept to some people. They fear it as much as the majority of people fear loneliness. ↗

— Criss Jami

#companion #companionship #different #extroversion #fear

I feel there's a funny little hole in me that wasn't there before, like a splinter in your finger, but this is somewhere above my stomach. ↗

— Louise Fitzhugh

#funny

I ain't got no people. I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone. That ain't no good. They don't have no fun. After a long time they get mean. They get wantin' to fight all the time. . . 'Course Lennie's a God damn nuisance most of the time, but you get used to goin' around with a guy an' you can't get rid of him. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#loneliness #friendship

I was amazed by the fact that I was not the only writer living, not the only young man "with a locomotive in his chest, and that's a fact," not the only youth with a million hungers and not one of them appeasable, not the only one who is lonely among multitudes, and does not know why. ↗

— Jack Kerouac

#atop-an-underwood #beat #inspirational #jack-kerouac #locomotive

She imagined herself as some sort of vessel to be filled up with love. But it wasn't like that. The love was within her all the time, and its only renewal came from giving it away. ↗

— Kim Edwards

#love #imagination

The house is eerily quiet. All this time I thought silence would be a welcome reprieve, but it's less comforting than I imagined. The house feels so much bigger and colder than it ever has. ↗

— Hannah Harrington

#loneliness #loss #imagination