Jonathan Franzen Quotes

A big part of depression is feeling really lonely, even if you're in a room full of a million people.

Though we are more prosperous a nation and more connected a global community than ever before, many of us still feel lonely, disoriented and uncertain of the future.

Loneliness can become a downward spiral.

I suffer from life and from other people. I can’t look at reality face to face. Even the sun discourages and depresses me. Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful — only then do I find myself and feel comforted.

You can't put abandonment and alienation under arrest.

I had no friends. I worried a lot.

I think the degree of alienation and despair is more universal.

Isolation is a dream killer.

I felt like I was the only person on the planet with this 'thing called depression', and I remember being frightened. I was knocked out and dopey, and I cried all of the time.

A lot of people have to deal with the feeling that their worlds are caving in.

Depression - it falls into that small category of things like combat that, if you haven't been in it, you can say you can imagine it all you like. But it's truly different.

I used to like going out so much, and now I can't get myself to leave home.

I'm perpetually lonely.

I went from being very popular and the head of the clique in the sixth grade to having, like, kid depression in the seventh grade. Not leaving the house. Not looking people in the eye... My body made me feel bad at everything.

I think a lot of kids feel alone and slightly isolated and in their own world.

We think constant connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true.

I didn't realise how much I was alienating people. I would constantly refuse to go out when friends would call. At one point, I didn't realise I was at home for a week.

I have this morbid fascination with being completely alienated from everybody, and a lot of the time I really do feel that way.

We are living in dystopia, in a world that is dominated by technology and disconnect, alienation, loneliness, and dysfunction.

I was so unhappy during the last months on 'Bonanza' I was really neurotic. I was anti-social.

I felt myself in a solitude so frightful that I contemplated suicide. What held me back was the idea that no one, absolutely no one, would be moved by my death, that I would be even more alone in death than in life.

... you looked around and saw everybody either married or busy and happy and thinking and being creative, and you felt scared, sick, lethargic, worst of all, not wanting to cope. You saw visions of yourself in a straightjacket, and a drain on the family, murdering your mother in actuality, killing the edifice of love and respect built up over the years in the hearts of other people.

I don't feel a connection with younger people or with Generation X, or any generation, I feel. If I felt a connection with people my age I wouldn't have written six books about feeling depressed, alienated, lonely. If I did I would have many friends and feel connected with them and probably be a happy person who has a real job.

The brief relief of seeing other people when I leave my room turns into a desperate need to be alone, and then being alone turns into a terrible fear that I will have no friends, I will be alone in this world and in my life. I will eventually be so crazy from this black wave, which seems to be taking over my head with increasing frequency, that one day I will just kill myself, not for any great, thoughtful existential reasons, but because I need immediate relief.

Everybody's having fun, except me I'm the lonely one I live in shame.