“Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment.”
“Often it feels like I am breathing today only because a few years back I had no idea which nerve to cut...”
“We need solitude, because when we re alone, we re free from obligations, we don t need to put on a show, and we can hear our own thoughts.”
“If we stay where we are, where we re stuck, where we re comfortable and safe, we die there. We become like mushrooms, living in the dark, with poop up to our chins. If you want to know only what you already know, you re dying. You re saying: Leave me alone; I don t mind this little rathole. It s warm and dry. Really, it s fine. When nothing new can get in, that s death. When oxygen can t find a way in, you die. But new is scary, and new can be disappointing, and confusing - we had this all figured out, and now we don t. New is life.”
“I was lonely. I felt it deeply and permanently, that this state of being on my own might never disappear. But I welcomed the lonliness, which had everything to do with being anonymous. It s never lonliness that nibbles away at a person s insides, but not having room inside themselves to be comfortably alone.”
“I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone. How commonplace and stupid it would be if I had a friend now, sitting beside me, someone I had known at school, who would say: “By-the-way, I saw old Hilda the other day. You remember her, the one who was so good at tennis. She’s married, with two children.” And the bluebells beside us unnoticed, and the pigeons overhead unheard. I did not want anyone with me. Not even Maxim. If Maxim had been there I should not be lying as I was now, chewing a piece of grass, my eyes shut. I should have been watching him, watching his eyes, his expression. Wondering if he liked it, if he was bored. Wondering what he was thinking. Now I could relax, none of these things mattered. Maxim was in London. How lovely it was to be alone again.”
“I had been alone more than I could have been had I gone by myself.”
“So ... will you stay with me until it s over? Please? Kaylee, I would do anything for the girl who granted my dying wish.”
“If we are alone, we become more alone. Life is strange”
“That s the thing with handmade items. They still have the person s mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone.”
“There s this rushing sound, like white noise. The sound of nothing.”
“And Harry remembered his first nightmarish trip into the forest, the first time he had ever encountered the thing that was then Voldemort, and how he had faced him, and how he and Dumbledore had discussed fighting a losing battle not long thereafter. It was important, Dumbledore said, to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated. . . . And Harry saw very clearly as he sat there under the hot sun how people who cared about him had stood in front of him one by one, his mother, his father, his godfather, and finally Dumbledore, all determined to protect him; but now that was over. He could not let anybody else stand between him and Voldemort; he must abandon forever the illusion he ought to have lost at the age of one, that the shelter of a parent’s arms meant that nothing could hurt him. There was no waking from his nightmare, no comforting whisper in the dark that he was safe really, that it was all in his imagination; the last and greatest of his protectors had died, and he was more alone than he had ever been before.”
“I m all alone, but I m not lonely.”
“I m glad you re here, said Laurent. I always thought that I d have to face my uncle alone. He turned to look at Damen, and their eyes met. You re not alone, said Damen. Laurent didn t answer, but he did give a smile, and reached out to touch Damen, wordlessly.”
“I don t know why I still feel this pit in my stomach whenever I get a moment to think. I know what the pit is, too; I feel lonely. But I m not alone, I keep telling myself.”
“Whoever has no house now, will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone, will sit, read, write long letters through the evening, and wander on the boulevards, up and down, restlessly, while dry leaves are blowing.”
“In the beginning, being alone is always a choice. Then it s not a choice anymore. When did it stop being a choice? What is it in me that stopped choosing you, that moved into you instead so that I have to be with you in order to be with myself?”