desire for solitude Quotes

The tragedy is not that we are alone, but that we cannot be. At times I would give anything in the world to no longer be connected by anything to this universe of men.

I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.

I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me . . . To do things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day . . . was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep.

It was not generally realized that what children mostly wanted was to be left alone.

But also I wanted him to go away and leave me be. I was granted one weak grace. Back in the room where the green chair was still warm from his body, I blew that lonely, flickering candle out

People run away to be alone,' he said. Some people had to be alone.

I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a chance to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard - and in order to forget.

How in the world was I alone? Because I wanted to be. That's all I can say. It's all that makes sense to me.

But what he didn't understand was that this dreamland was preferable, walking through this life half-sleeping, everything at arm's length or farther away. I understood those mermaids. I didn't care if they sang to me. All I wanted was to block out all the human voices as they called me name again and again, pulling me upward into light, to drown.

I have dogs, and it's no secret that I find reptiles interesting, but the thing about reptiles is that they really just wanna be left alone, and I understand them. It's, 'Don't pick me up, stop holding me, don't look at me, just leave me alone.' I have to admit, sometimes I feel like that.

Whenever he was in company he wanted to get away, and whenever he was alone he wanted company.

I shall be glad then to find a hole to creep out of the world.

I exist," murmurs someone whose name is Everyone. "I'm young and in love; I am old and I want rest; I work, I prosper, I do good business, I have houses to rent, money in State Securities; I am happy, I have wife and children; I like all these things and I want to go on living, so leave me alone."... There are moments when all this casts a deep chill on the large-minded pioneers of the human race.

I had rather be in my grave than in my present situation, I had rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world; and yet they charge me with wanting to be a king.

I just want some space to myself every now and then. Every time I’m with you I have this sense that you want something from me.

We are men without ambition, and all we want is to be left alone, in peace so that we can try and be happy. So few people will understand this simplicity.

Who doesn't want to just disappear, at some point in the day, in a year, to just step off the map and float?

When I was young, all I wanted and expected from life was to sit quietly in some corner doing my work without the public paying attention to me. And now see what has become of me.

Life continues, and some mornings, weary of the noise, discouraged by the prospect of the interminable work to keep after, sickened also by the madness of the world that leaps at you from the newspaper, finally convinced that I will not be equal to it and that I will disappoint everyone - all I want to do is sit down and wait for evening. This is what I feel like, and sometimes I yield to it.

Who longs in solitude to live, Ah! soon his wish will gain: Men hope and love, men get and give, and leave him to his pain.

There are times when you want your privacy, when you don't want the cameras in your face capturing your every move, every tear, every look. But I've gotten used to it.

I sort of ended up in Los Angeles by accident. And it was sort of terrible to be jostled into this position of a fame-hungry starlet. Which is so honestly not me! In fact, I could use a bit more of that because I am such a hermit! So I allowed myself to get really bothered.

You ask rather too many questions. I have given you answers enough for the present: now I want to read.