#solitude

I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company. ↗

— Henry Miller

#silence #solitude #music

There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it. ↗

— May Sarton

#lonely-loneliness #solitude #business

Violent passions are formed in solitude. In the busy world no object has time to make a deep impression. ↗

— Henry Home

#solitude #business

My grandmother's death had given me a heightened sense of individual solitude, of each one of us walking towards his own death, with no one able to help us or hold us back. ↗

— Françoise Gilot

#death

Death really did not matter to him but life did, and therefore the sensation he felt when they gave their decision was not a feeling of fear but of nostalgia. ↗

— Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

#death

The observations and encounters of a man of solitude and few words are at once more nebulous and more intense than those of a gregarious man, his thoughts more ponderable, more bizarre and never without a hint of sadness. Images and perceptions that might easily be dismissed with a glance, a laugh, an exchange of opinions occupy him unduly; they are heightened in the silence, gain in significance, turn into experience, adventure, emotion. Solitude begets originality, bold and disconcerting beauty, poetry. But solitude can also beget perversity, disparity, the absurd and the forbidden. ↗

— Thomas Mann

#solitude #beauty

People who do a job that claims to be creative have to be alone to recharge their batteries. You can’t live 24 hours a day in the spotlight and remain creative. For people like me, solitude is a victory. ↗

— Karl Lagerfeld

#charge #creativity #designer #energy #fame

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. ↗

— Fernando Pessoa

#reading #solitude #life

Who hears music, feels his solitude Peopled at once. ↗

— Robert Browning

#power-of-music #solitude #music

You need to establish a degree of privacy and solitude in order to write ↗

— Pamela Glass Kelly

#solitude #write #inspirational