Solitude Quotes

1. “Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”

2. “In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.”

3. “Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.”

4. “Solitude is independence.”

5. “I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.”

6. “Solitude vivifies; isolation kills.”

7. “Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.”

8. “Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.”

9. “Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.”

10. “Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.”

11. “The thoughtful soul to solitude retires.”

12. “When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop. Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign is solitude.”

13. “Solitude is the strength of being alone. It's where we become our best company.”

14. “Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt In solitude, where we are least alone.”

15. “Solitude is pleasant. Loneliness is not.”

16. “Solitude helps you reflect.”

17. “I am a bit of a solitude person - a solitary personality. I like being on my own. I don't have any major friendships or relationships with people.”

18. “The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.”

19. “I owe my solitude to other people.”

20. “One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.”

21. “Your inner voice is the voice of divinity. To hear it, we need to be in solitude, even in crowded places.”

22. “There is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect.”

23. “Who hears music feels his solitude peopled at once.”

24. “O solitude, where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms, Than reign in this horrible place.”

25. “Don't be a writer; it's a terrible way to live your life. There's nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don't expect anything from anybody.”

26. “I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.”

27. “I like solitude. I like the anomalous life. I like a quiet life.”

28. “Solitude is very different from a 'time-out' from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other.”

29. “Alone let him constantly meditate in solitude on that which is salutary for his soul, for he who meditates in solitude attains supreme bliss.”

30. “The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, her forces of mind and body… is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life.”

31. “Solitude, isolation, are painful things and beyond human endurance.”

32. “Solitude is not the same as loneliness. Solitude is a solitary boat floating in a sea of possible companions.”

33. “The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.”

34. “Loneliness is different than isolation and solitude. Loneliness is a subjective feeling where the connections we need are greater than the connections we have. In the gap, we experience loneliness. It's distinct from the objective state of isolation, which is determined by the number of people around you.”

35. “It is only in solitude that I ever find my own core.”

36. “One can acquire everything in solitude except character.”

37. “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”

38. “Solitude has its own very strange beauty to it.”

39. “Solitude is better than the society of evil persons.”

40. “A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.”

41. “I reflected much on that vain desire, which had pursued me for so many years, of being in solitude in order to be a Christian. I have now, thought I, solitude enough; but am I therefore the nearer being a Christian? Not if Jesus Christ be the model of Christianity.”

42. “There's a difference between solitude and loneliness. I can understand the concept of being a monk for a while.”

43. “Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.”

44. “Solitude is strength; to depend on the presence of the crowd is weakness. The man who needs a mob to nerve him is much more alone than he imagines.”

45. “Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.”

46. “I like silence; I'm a gregarious loner and without the solitude, I lose my gregariousness.”

47. “Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.”

48. “To go out with the setting sun on an empty beach is to truly embrace your solitude.”

49. “Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.”

50. “Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.”

51. “My public life is before you; and I know you will believe me when I say, that when I sit down in solitude to the labours of my profession, the only questions I ask myself are, What is right? What is just? What is for the public good?”

52. “Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.”

53. “Solitude is creativity's best friend, and solitude is refreshment for our souls.”

54. “We talk of communing with Nature, but 'tis with ourselves we commune… Nature furnishes the conditions - the solitude - and the soul furnishes the entertainment.”

55. “Only in solitude do we find ourselves; and in finding ourselves, we find in ourselves all our brothers in solitude.”

56. “It's an interesting combination: Having a great fear of being alone, and having a desperate need for solitude and the solitary experience. That's always been a tug of war for me.”

57. “Solitude is the companion of warriors.”

58. “Solitude is the place of purification.”

59. “Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.”

60. “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.”

61. “But in the end, in the end one is alone. We are all of us alone. I mean I'm told these days we have to consider ourselves as being in society… but in the end one knows one is alone, that one lives at the heart of a solitude.”

62. “Nothing is more capable of troubling our reason, and consuming our health, than secret notions of jealousy in solitude.”

63. “I like peace and solitude and silence.”

64. “Sometimes the only kind of innovation comes when you have some solitude; when you step away.”

65. “Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.”

66. “Look, if I were alone in the world, I would have the right to choose despair, solitude and self-fulfillment. But I am not alone.”

67. “Solitude begets whimsies.”

68. “Retire at various times into the solitude of your own heart, even while outwardly engaged in discussions or transactions with others, and talk to God.”

69. “The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”

70. “The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction.”

71. “Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.”

72. “With Jackson there was quiet solitude. Just to sit and look at the landscape. An inner quietness. After dinner, to sit on the back porch and look at the light. No need for talking. For any kind of communication.”

73. “To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.”

74. “The myth of my solitude makes me laugh.”

75. “When you have a lot of solitude, any living thing becomes a companion.”

76. “Extraordinary things happen in solitude.”

77. “It's clear to me that anyone, anywhere, can experience loneliness, isolation, solitude, and estrangement; and most people probably do encounter these things at some point in their lives.”

78. “I've never minded solitude. For a writer, it's a natural condition. But caring for a dementia sufferer leads to a peculiar kind of loneliness.”

79. “You may not enjoy loneliness, because loneliness is sad. But solitude is something else; solitude is what you look forward to when you want to be alone, when you want to be with yourself. So, solitude is something we all need from time to time.”

80. “Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.”

81. “Solitude shows us what should be; society shows us what we are.”

82. “Imagination, the traitor of the mind, has taken my solitude and slain it.”

83. “In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human solitude and walls.”

84. “I remember when I was a child… walking into the woods by myself and feeling the solitude around me build like electricity and pass through my body with a jolt that made my hair prickle.”

85. “For a writer, for the solitude to write, you don't need a room of your own, you need a house.”

86. “God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.”

87. “In my solitude, many miles from men and houses, I am in a childishly happy and carefree state of mind, which you are incapable of understanding unless someone explains it to you.”

88. “What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.”

89. “Language… has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone.”

90. “A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”

91. “The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal - every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open - this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.”

92. “God is absence. God is the solitude of man.”

93. “The conductor's stand is not a continent of power, but rather an island of solitude.”

94. “Loneliness is such an omnipotent and painful threat to many persons that they have little conception of the positive values of solitude and even, at times, are frightened at the prospect of being alone.”

95. “I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.”

96. “Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.”

97. “Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.”

98. “There's a difference between solitude and loneliness.”

99. “Much of the time I'm an introvert, by choice spending a lot of time on my own. I suppose liking my solitude is part of a writer's sensibility.”

100. “Breaking apart from someone you love very much can be unbearably painful, but finding yourself again can be a beautiful thing if you do your solitude right.”

101. “Everyone has their moments of solitude, difficulties, and vulnerability.”

102. “As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.”

103. “Solitude sharpens awareness of small pleasures otherwise lost.”

104. “'One Hundred Years of Solitude' convinced me to drop out of Harvard graduate school. The novel reminded me of everything my Ph.D. program was trying to make me forget. Thank you, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.”

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

106. “It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.”

107. “I used to ski across the vast white expanses of a quiet and lonely mountaintop. In the stillness and solitude… I pondered the mysteries of the universe, the planet, nature and of man. I'm still pondering.”

108. “I don't like being able to be reached. I enjoy my solitude. Even people having my phone number seems like too much.”

109. “The solution to alone-ness is not more solitude, but companionship and community.”

110. “Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.”

111. “The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.”

112. “I wish I wasn't so in love, wasn't so interested, in the Internet. I wish I spent less time online and more time outside and in my head. Writing requires solitude and deep, deep daydreaming, and the Internet just kills that - its lure is toward the external; it asks you to flit from place to place.”

113. “Loneliness is, like, when you wish someone else was there, and solitude is when you enjoy being alone. I don't always wanna be alone, but I definitely like pockets of solitude to recharge and come back to myself. I think that's so important for everyone.”

114. “Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.”

115. “Solitude is un-American.”

116. “Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection.”

117. “When you hear a solo piano, there's a solitude about just one instrument playing. It can be beautiful; it can be sad.”

118. “I didn't choose solitude.”

119. “Remember that although the distinction can be difficult to draw, loneliness and solitude are different.”

120. “Life is the desert, life the solitude, death joins us to the great majority.”

121. “Yes, I do seek solitude, but I am never lonely.”

122. “My music is very personal. I've created it in solitude. I face a white wall and beller. I like that sound - the expression of loneliness. That's what it's all about.”

123. “Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves; that firm strand which will be the indispensable center of a whole web of human relationships.”

124. “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.”

125. “Man is alone everywhere. But the solitude of the Mexican, under the great stone night of the high plateau that is still inhabited by insatiable gods, is very different from that of the North American, who wanders in an abstract world of machines, fellow citizens and moral precepts.”

126. “But when I lived as a monk, solitude is often spoken of as a strength. And so the first thing I'd recommend is finding one thing that you can do every single day that brings you joy. It may be reading a book you love. It may be looking at a beautiful piece of art.”

127. “Solitude can be used well by very few people. They who do must have a knowledge of the world to see the foolishness of it, and enough virtue to despise all the vanity.”

128. “I live in solitude. I have need of solitude to do the next day's work. I can't be to parties where the noise tires me. I can't speak on the telephone. I must have complete calm.”

129. “A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.”

130. “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.”

131. “He who lives in solitude may make his own laws.”

132. “We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest.”

133. “In the tumult of men and events, solitude was my temptation; now it is my friend. What other satisfaction can be sought once you have confronted History?”

134. “This great misfortune - to be incapable of solitude.”

135. “Love is made by two people, in different kinds of solitude. It can be in a crowd, but in an oblivious crowd.”

136. “One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.”

137. “Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves.”

138. “I needed to be in the bush. There I find solitude and beauty and purity and focus. That's where my heart lies.”

139. “I have to say that I have no regrets about my decision to become a priest or about the major directions my ministry has taken me… I have been and am happy as a priest, and I have never been lonely… I could have used a bit more solitude.”

140. “I'm pretty social so it's hard for me to find solitude, but I need to have solitude to write.”

141. “Converse with men makes sharp the glittering wit, but God to man doth speak in solitude.”

142. “Cultivate solitude and quiet and a few sincere friends, rather than mob merriment, noise and thousands of nodding acquaintances.”

143. “Half the pleasure of solitude comes from having with us some friend to whom we can say how sweet solitude is.”

144. “Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humor is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude.”

145. “I don't mind solitude. I love talking to other people, but I do need my space.”

146. “Writing is sweat and drudgery most of the time. And you have to love it in order to endure the solitude and the discipline.”

147. “During my solitude, conflicting thoughts increased; but much exercise of soul had the effect of causing the scriptures to gain complete ascendancy over me.”

148. “I really do work in solitude.”

149. “I was thinking, too, of Superman and his fortress of solitude.”

150. “In my solitude I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death.”

151. “Silence and solitude are more distracting to me than chatter and commotion.”

152. “It's hard to spend years at a time working in total solitude with no reality-check.”

153. “I can write best in the silence and solitude of the night, when everyone has retired.”

154. “Reading takes solitude and it takes focus.”

155. “No matter how much we love our family and friends, a part of us needs the occasional moment of solitude as a plant needs water. It is the inmost core of each of us that, that part which nobody can define but which we all recognize because it never changes.”

156. “But the delights of solitude don't only consist of dreaming. Next in enjoyment, I think, comes planning.”

157. “I would advise you to write, my dear friend, because with your active nature, solitude is simply intolerable to you, and after some time your solitude would become perhaps attractive if you were to people it with creatures of your own fancy.”

158. “We wrote verses that condemned us, with no hope of pardon, to the most bitter solitude.”

159. “From the night, his solitude, the poet finds day and starts a diary that is lethal to the inert. The dark landscape yields a dialogue.”

160. “Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.”

161. “Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid.”

162. “A great reader seldom recognizes his solitude.”

163. “People who abhor solitude may abhor company almost as much.”

164. “Solitude terrifies the soul at twenty.”

165. “To be exempt from the Passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing Solitude.”

166. “Do your work for six years; but in the seventh, go into solitude or among strangers, so that the memory of your friends does not hinder you from being what you have become.”

167. “Highest of heights, I climb this mountain and feel one with the rock and grit and solitude echoing back at me.”

168. “I had to learn - since I'm divorced now and everyone is like, 'Oh my God, you're single, what's going on?' - that if I don't like to spend time with myself, how can I ask someone else to enjoy spending time with me? I'm getting to learn how to enjoy my solitude and have a good time.”

169. “I like the idea of isolation, I like the idea of solitude. You can be connected and have a phone and still be lonely.”

170. “All my life, I will continue obstinately to write about love, solitude and passion among the kind of people I know. The rest don't interest me.”

171. “But I think there's something wonderful and extraordinary about climbing on your own and just that kind of relationship to the environment. I'm very addicted to the mountains. You know, so, I do like that solitude.”

172. “I love the solitude of being on a plane and finally getting to read an entire book and being left alone.”

173. “As I've gotten older I've occasionally found myself nostalgic for earlier periods of solitude, though I realize that's also likely a false nostalgia, as I know there was nothing I wanted more during those periods than to not be alone, whatever that means.”

174. “I love hotels for their solitude and comfort, but I believe a seedy one can have as much promise as a plush one.”

175. “In thinking about religion and society in the 21st century, we should broaden the conversation about faith from doctrinal debates to the larger question of how it might inspire us to strengthen the bonds of belonging that redeem us from our solitude, helping us to construct together a gracious and generous social order.”

176. “I'm as much my own master as anyone can be, without being the master of others. I can write anywhere - all I need is a couple of hours of solitude and a computer, and I can write a chapter. Since my work is portable, I can live anywhere I like.”

177. “I guess part of the hit-man appeal is the solitude. Everybody is lured to the idea of the solitary life.”

178. “Aside from what it teaches you, there is simply the indescribable degree of peace that can be achieved on a sailing vessel at sea. I guess a combination of hard work and the seemingly infinite expanse of the sea - the profound solitude - that does it for me.”

179. “A lot of directors prefer the solitude of the editing process, but I revel in the craziness of what a film set is.”

180. “I write in order to find out what I truly know and how I really feel about certain things. Writing requires me to go much deeper into my thoughts and memories than conversation does. Writing provides the solitude necessary to reflect on being in this world.”

181. “Since the time of St. Jerome, it was mandatory for any kind of scholar or thinker to spend time out in the desert in solitude. It's no coincidence that the desert has been a major part of the visionary or mystical experience from the beginning of time.”

182. “The writing gets done away from the keyboard and away from the studio in my head, in solitude. And then I come in and hopefully have something, then I wrestle with sounds and picture all day long. But the ideas usually come from a more obscure place, like a conversation with a director, a still somebody shows you, or whatever.”

183. “What I need to write well is a combination of heat, light and solitude.”

184. “On the broad spectrum of solitude, I lean toward the extreme end: I work alone, as well as live alone, so I can pass an entire day without uttering so much as a hello to another human being. Sometimes a day's conversation consists of only five words, uttered at the local Starbucks: 'Large coffee with milk, please.'”

185. “I've always been drawn to solitude, felt a kind of luxurious relief in its self-generated pace and rhythms.”

186. “Solitude is a breeding ground for idiosyncrasy, and I relish that about it, the way it liberates whim.”

187. “I'm not saying abolish group work - I think there's a time and a place for people to come together and exchange ideas, but let's restore the respect we once had for solitude. And we need to be much more mindful of the way we come together.”

188. “First and foremost, the monk should own nothing in this world, but he should have as his possessions solitude of the body, modesty of bearing, a modulated tone of voice, and a well-ordered manner of speech. He should be without anxiety as to his food and drink, and should eat in silence.”

189. “Some people can't stand being alone. I love solitude and silence. But when I come out of it, I'm a regular talking machine. It's all or nothing for me.”

190. “My favorite books are actually very complicated - 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', 'Ulysses'.”

191. “I don't know how anyone gets anything done in cities. How can you live somewhere like London or New York, when there are 81 things to do every night? Awful. Give me solitude and space any time.”

192. “Look at Austen. In her novels, you get a dance, followed by an encounter, followed by a letter, then a period of solitude. No flashbacks and no backstory. Let's have no more back story!”

193. “Solitude is good in the evening. Dublin is a quiet city when you get to a certain age, when your friends settle down and have kids. Nothing much happens here.”

194. “There are few places you can find silence. Air travel could be the last fortress of solitude.”

195. “Solitude is the place where we can connect with profound bonds that are deeper than the emergency bonds of fear and anger.”

196. “In solitude we become aware that we were together before we came together and that life is not a creation of our will but rather an obedient response to the reality of our being united.”

197. “There's something about the darkness that I find unavoidably intoxicating. The knowledge that other people are sleeping and, therefore, unavailable to ruin my solitude, makes me more peaceful than I am during the day.”

198. “As a model, I didn't have an identity; I was a chameleon, a silent actress. I was an amorphous thing. I wasn't full of personality, I was full of solitude and solemnity. I wasn't a cover-girl type.”

199. “Introverts like being introverts. We are drawn to ideas, we are passionate observers, and for us, solitude is rich and generative.”

200. “Writers want to talk. They can't wait to tell you what they've been thinking. And because they've been in solitude, they've had some fairly decent thoughts.”

201. “You can't write an image, a metaphor, a story, a phrase, without leaning a little further into the shared world, without recognizing that your supposed solitude is at every point of its perimeter touching some other.”

202. “I love writing, and I love the solitude of the writing, in that you're just sitting there creating something from nothing, or a new story for characters you love and care about.”

203. “African-Americans assume I'm named after the notorious Soledad prison or Mount Soledad in California. Latinos want to know if I'm lonely. That doesn't fit, because I grew up with five siblings, and I have four kids of my own, so I'm not lonely at all, though I do often seek solitude, the actual meaning of my name.”

204. “The rigors of creativity - the self-doubt, the revising, the solitude - do require a kind of self-consumption. It comes at a cost; a cost that isn't for everyone.”

205. “For me, writing a novel goes on for years, and the solitude goes on, too. It tends to swallow me at times. I know it's a problem when my husband sends the dog in to retrieve me.”

206. “I like solitude. I'm very good at being disconnected. I do a lot of disappearing. People who know me go, 'Oh yeah, Mailman, she's gone into her cave again.' I'm like that, a bit of a hibernating bear. Like that crocodile that just sits there in the water and doesn't do much. I was always a bit of a dreamer as a kid, so that hasn't changed.”

207. “'One Hundred Years of Solitude' is a masterpiece because it is an episodic novel that has a rigorous form - an unprecedented combination. From the very beginning we know the town of Macondo will endure only a century, so there is a limit to the length of the narrative.”

208. “For me, there's nothing better than getting immersed in a sprawling, epic, multi-generational family saga, and 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the most sprawling, epic, and multi-generational of them all.”

209. “Only a great genius like the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell can be mother, wife and novelist without solitude. I couldn't write until my youngest child went to school, and then I began - the first morning - and I've never stopped.”

210. “Walt Whitman is the only great modern poet who does not seem to experience discord when he faces his world. Not even solitude - his monologue is a universal chorus.”

211. “I think female solitude is a mental condition as well as a physical state. You can be married and a spinster. I think spinster is an identity every woman can claim, if she will… I feel like a lot of women, or a lot of feminists, joke about taking to the sea or living alone in a cottage as this kind of fun freedom.”

212. “Some people don't like long bus rides, but I love them. There's sort of a sense of solitude.”

213. “I try to factor solitude into my life because more and more, that's becoming a very precious and rare commodity.”

214. “What I like is the idea of a group, even if it's just two people - the idea of solitude within a group.”

215. “I need quiet and solitude to work. Darkness is best. If I am wide awake, I can't write.”

216. “I sort of came from a big family - eight kids - and I guess I always, more than most people, really revel in privacy and solitude sometimes.”

217. “Although I've made notes for things and even written synopses sitting in trains or on park benches, for the complete composition of things I need absolute solitude, preferably an empty house.”

218. “Someone who's awake in the middle of the night is a soul consciousness when everyone else is asleep, and that creates a feeling of solitude in poetry that I very much like.”

219. “Emily Dickinson has haunted my life - her poems, her persona, all the tales about her solitude. Ever since I discovered her in the seventh grade, I've had a crush on that spinster in white, who had such a heroic and startling inner landscape of her own.”

220. “Often, marriage was solitude, with company.”

221. “At the age of seventeen, I decided I would spend my life writing fiction. I didn't know what this entailed, exactly - a room, I supposed. A room and books and paper and solitude.”

222. “Growing up a lonely only child prepared me for the years of solitude spent as a writer; years spent in the company of people who don't exist, imaginary people you have conversations with. It's a paid form of madness, this writing stuff.”

223. “My father was the church organist; the village curate was my mother's brother, a former monk from the order of Pijar, a very well-educated and ascetic man who loved nothing but solitude.”

224. “It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude.”

225. “I usually find myself hiking in a place that not a lot of people go hiking, just trying to find some solitude. I like being out in the middle of nowhere. Not always, but it's a good place to go to just reflect and think, and it's something I really enjoy.”

226. “I grew up in the suburbs of Connecticut - during the school time of year - but I preferred it in New Hampshire. I preferred the culture, the landscape, the relative solitude. I've always loved it.”

227. “In Old Havana, the names of the streets before the revolution provided a glimpse into the city's state of mind. You might have known someone who lived on the corner of Soul and Bitterness, Solitude and Hope, or Light and Avocado.”

228. “The country is more of a wilderness, more of a wild solitude, in the winter than in the summer. The wild comes out. The urban, the cultivated, is hidden or negatived.”

229. “I have a sort of Catholic-slash-Calvinist view of human nature, but every day I meet somebody who is doing cool things. So people get you out of your solitude and do things that exceed your expectations every day.”

230. “We leave TVs on in our house. I listen to my record player constantly to just hear music. I'm really intrigued by this idea of solitude.”

231. “How different a creature is man in society and man in solitude!”

232. “I think I definitely like the solitude of golf.”

233. “I'm learning not to hold on so tightly to my solitude. It's not an economical way to work. A driver would call it 'white-knuckling.' If you're holding on to the wheel so tightly, it's gonna lock up your driving. Releasing myself from trying to control everything has been part of growing up.”

234. “How can we have our privacy? How can we have our independence now in these times with these cameras? Because I think privacy and our solitude is really important.”

235. “I suppose a lot of people don't understand that one of the things that drew me to hunting was the peace and the solitude, the mushy spiritual stuff, strangely enough. The quiet away from 75,000 roaring fans. The fans, that's very wonderful - I get a great charge from that.”

236. “I cherish my time off and the solitude that comes along with it.”

237. “Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' is such a powerful book, and 'Love in the Time of Cholera' is so strangely, brilliantly optimistic.”

238. “Frightening things happen in solitude.”

239. “When I finished reading '100 Years of Solitude,' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I got really sad. I thought, 'This will never happen for me, for the first time, ever again.' Then I opened 'Beauty Is a Wound.' It's a completely different story and writing style, but it has a similar place in my heart now.”

240. “Trucking-company terminals are places where paperwork gets filled out, driving orders are given, and partners are assigned. They can often be social hubs for drivers, breaking up the monotony and solitude they face on the road.”

241. “How would Jonathan Lethem have obtained such a stellar endorsement for 'The Fortress of Solitude' from Michael Chabon, if not for the years they spent ghostwriting 'MAD' magazine fold-ins together?”

242. “I use solitude as a judge and as a person - a lot.”

243. “I've always loved the woods, and I've always loved gardening and a lot of solitude and quiet.”

244. “One can't live in solitude. To survive as a single family unit is not possible.”

245. “'A Perfect Place' is character-driven. The director for that wanted a couple of identifiable themes with a bunch of variations. That is what I did. The director for 'The Solitude of Prime Numbers' did not want that at all.”

246. “In solitude, we find ourselves; we prepare ourselves to come to conversation with something to say that is authentic, ours.”

247. “If you're constantly stimulated by being called away to the buzzing and the excitement of what's on your phone, solitude seems kind of scary.”

248. “There's just an incredible amount of loneliness as a mother, all this solitude no one really speaks to.”

249. “I am always able to find that solitude. I am always able to find that peace. Which is tight. That is what has helped me keep going.”

250. “Sometimes I have to run and hide. What I do at home sometimes is, I listen to a CD of the roughness of the ocean. I turn every light off, and I turn the stereo on, and I just go in my mind, cry, talk to God, tell him, 'I'm your child, too.' And I stay in my little solitude until I can get the strength to go outdoors.”

251. “I grew up in Michigan. I feel like a lot of my childhood was in solitude, in the woods or making tree forts.”

252. “Solitude is very restorative for me, especially because I spend so much time around other people and performing to people.”

253. “There's a difference between loneliness and solitude. You pursue solitude, I think. But loneliness is a completely different isolating thing.”

254. “Sometimes I just need solitude, which is really rather nice.”

255. “I love nature, I really do. I love the great outdoors, I love the concept of quiet, peaceful solitude shared only with the loons calling to each other across the water, and Bambi and Thumper in the forest, and a simple tent between me and the starry, starry sky.”

256. “Girls' strength lies in its diversity, and its members have walked in a lot of borrowed shoes to make it that way. 'Solitude' is a bold and sweet example of inspiration trumping originality.”

257. “If you use that time where you're alone in ways that bring you joy and peace, then that solitude can have a really positive effect on your life.”

258. “I love the solitude of the mountains. I write, take pictures and get inspired by the colors of nature.”

259. “I can't do solitude.”

260. “Solitude is part of my life, and I don't mind that. I like it. I love it. I don't allow loneliness to be part of my life, let's put it that way. I really won't allow it. If I feel lonely, I phone somebody or I go for a walk or a swim, get the endorphins going, because I hate feeling lonely.”

261. “I still find it difficult to cope with the solitude of writing. I often crave the feedback of working with a team.”

262. “I guess I always need some kind of solitude to get to that place where I am open enough and have zero distractions to start on the initial ideas for songs.”

263. “As public as I seem with all my charity parties and entertaining, I actually spend a lot time in solitude and need it!”

264. “I realised that rather than looking for someone else to be an 'other half' to make me whole, that I need to be whole myself. That's what solitude taught me - that I am enough.”

265. “I love the solitude of being in a tree with a bow and arrow.”

266. “Ultimately, goalkeepers are on their own. I like the solitude.”

267. “To have any sort of community is so, so important for humans. I think that I forget that sometimes because I definitely enjoy my solitude.”