“Social distancing is staying away from people not from your purpose.”
“The difficulty of living alone is that any mess he makes he is forced to clean up himself. No, the real difficulty of living alone is that no one cares if you are upset.”
“If it s true what is said, that only the wise discover the wise, then it must also be true that the lone wolf symbolizes either the biggest fool on the planet or the biggest Einstein on the planet.”
“أنفٌ وحيد صينيةُ الشاي بفناجينِها الخزفيةِ الكثيرة بصَخبِها وكثيفِ بخارِها برنينِ الملاعقِ على الحوافِ بعد تقليبِ السُُّكرْ تختلفُ عن فنجانٍ صامتٍ وحيدْ يجلسُ في فتورٍ فوق حافةِ مكتبٍ عتيقْ ينتظرُ امرأةً واجمةْ. الأبخرةُ الكثيفةْ (التي تتقافزُ من الفناجين الكثيرة التي تختلفُ عن الفنجان الوحيد) تحملُ رائحةَ أوراقِ الشاي الهنديِّ التي: جمعتها أيادٍ وجفّفتها أيادٍ وعلبّتها وشحنتها أيادٍ، لكي تشربَها أيادٍ كثيرة. ترتفعُ صيحاتُها، الأبخرةُ، لتعلوَ على صَخَبِ أنوفٍ كثيرة تتحلّقُ حول صينيةٍ في منتصفِ قاعةِ معيشة صاخبة. بينما، مِن الفنجانِ الوحيد، يصعدُ خيطٌ نحيلٌ من البخارْ ساكتٌ واهنْ يتراقصُ في منحنياتٍ ضَجِرة ليبحث في صعوبةٍ عن أنفِ السيدةِ التي لا أحدَ يزورُها.”
“I don t know what I am thinking. But I am alone. I am trapped in the net of the room. In the net of humans. I think maybe I am drowning in the net of humans.”
“On those occasions when he had killed in the dark, he later needed to see his victims faces because, in some unlit corner of his heart, he half expected to find his own face looking up at him, ice-white and dead-eyed. Deep down, the dream-victim had said, You know that you re already dead yourself, burnt out inside. You realize that you have far more in common with your victims after you ve killed them than before.”
“I can t imagine what my life was before. I can t imagine ever being without you for very long again.”
“Though he wouldn t dare admit that he might have felt more for her. He wasn t ready to care for a person that much when he still didn t care too highly for himself. most days Landon regarded himself as a lost soul, a wanderer. Who could love such a man?”
“Sometimes isolation can be shared.”
“If you are happy for a day, a thousand people notice it, but when you are sad for years, everyone just walks away.”
“Quite alone. No voice, no touch, no hand....How long must I lie here? For ever? No, only for a couple of hundred years this time, miss....”
“Loneliness has a pathos all its own...”
“They all seem infected with a vivaciousness that isn t common in our compound, and there are more smiles on their faces than I ve ever seen at once. And yet as I watch them, I feel more intensely than ever the knowledge that I m not one of them. For these moral humans, birthdays are a kind of countdown to the end, the ticking clock of a dwindling life. For me, birthdays are notches on an infinite timeline. Will I grow tired of parties one day? Will my birthday become meaningless? I imagine myself centuries from now, maybe at my three-hundredth birthday, looking all the way back to my seventeenth. How will I possibly be happy, remembering the light in my mother s eyes? The swiftness of Uncle Antonio s steps as he dances? The way my father stands on edge of the courtyard, smiling in that vague, absent way of his? The scene shifts and blues in my imagination. As if brushed away by some invisible broom, these people whom I ve known my entire life disappear. The courtyard is empty, bare, covered in decaying leaves. I imagine Little Cam deserted, with everyone dead and gone and only me left in the shadows. Forever.”
“I have always known there is a difference between loneliness and aloneness. I am alone, but my father is lonely. And if I had to choose one, I would rather be alone.”
“THE TRUE CHARACTER OF A PERSON IN SEEN WHEN HE/SHE IS ALONE...”
“He liked to get off by himself, a mile or so from camp, and listen to the country, not the men.”
“I live in my bubble of Isolation and self-loathing and with time passing, I have learned to love it.”