Alice James Quotes

The lonely become either thoughtful or empty.

There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.

I am lonely, sometimes, but I dare say it's good for me.

My diaries were written primarily, I think, not to preserve the experience but to savor it, to make it even more real, more visible and palpable, than in actual life. For in our family an experience was not finished, not truly experienced, unless written down or shared with another.

I guess whatever maturity is there may be there because I've been keeping a journal forever. In high school my friends would make fun of me - you're doing your man diary again. So I was always trying to translate experience into words.

For me, writing is a way of thinking. I write in a journal a lot. I'm a very impatient person, so writing and meditation allow me to slow down and watch my mind; they are containers that keep me in place, hold me still.

A journal of the 'subjective' kind I have always thought foolish, as nurturing a morbid self -consciousness in the writer; and yet, alone so much as I am, it is well to have some sort of a ventilator from the interior.

I like melancholy. I like to pretend that I'm alone in the world and I'm just sort of abandoned.

I had friends but I was spending a great deal of my time alone and for me that was vital because there's an awful lot you learn about yourself when you're alone.

Everyone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.

When everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself.

I write to feel alone.

I hit 'record' whenever I'm going through a really hard time. I don't listen to it for a couple of days, so I have some perspective. If it's too personal to share, and I feel like would alienate the listeners, then I usually don't share that stuff.

Writing is a tribute to solitude. It is choosing introversion over extroversion, lonely hours/days/weeks/years over fun and sociability.

Writing is a type of therapy for me. I'm always trying to break down what happened, and why I felt a certain way.

When a man is extremely lonely, he starts discovering himself.

I am, I said to no one there and no one heard at all, not even a chair.

I think it's good for a person to spend time alone. It gives them an opportunity to discover who they are and to figure out why they are always alone.

and sometimes I sit down at my typewriter and I think not of someone cause there isn't anyone to think about and i wonder is it worth it

In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up. It was the best advice Francie every got.

You have to remember that writing itself is so solitary. You start writing because you're lonely.

--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Writing is the lonely sport of sad sacks.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts, and pray long prayers?

When she is alone in the rooms I hear her humming to keep herself from thinking.