#lonliness

From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived. ↗

— Betty Smith

#literature #lonliness #reading #solitude #love

Take hands. There is no love now. But there are hands. There is no joining now, But a joining has been Of the fastening of fingers And their opening. More than the clasp even, the kiss Speaks loneliness, How we dwell apart, And how love triumphs in this. ↗

— Laura Riding Jackson

#love #poetry #love

After all, in the very casualness of Gatsby's party there were romantic possibilities totally absent from her world. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#romance #romantic

There are times when I can find myself in a book, too, for two or three hours. But afterward I have such an urge to go out and reach for other people. Very often they're not around. There's also a metaphysical loneliness. We all feel it. The burden of living one's own life is experiencing sensations that no one else can share. You take a step in a house, you start moving around the house, no one else moves with you. You're walking by yourself. ↗

— David Ignatow

#solitude #life

No person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone. There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors. ↗

— Adrienne Rich

#growth #lonliness #love #struggle #support

You're great but you're not there when I go to bed at night or get up in the morning. You don't make me a cup of tea after a hard day at work, or rub my back in the bath. I'm sick of being lonely. Is that so wrong?  ↗

— Eleanor Prescott

#relationships #art

We need books...because we are all, in the private kingdoms of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend. ↗

— Steve Almond

#friendship #lonliness #friendship

In tragedy and despair, when an endless night seems to have fallen, hope can be found in the realization taht the companion of night is not another night, that the companion of night is day, that darkness always gives way to light, and that death rules only half of creation, life the other half. ↗

— Dean Koontz

#day #depression #lonliness #night #tragedy

Aye, though he loved her from his soul with such a self denying love as woman seldom wins; he spoke from first to last of Martin. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#lonliness #love #love