• The creative person is constantly seeking to discover himself, to remodel his own identity, and to find meaning in the universe through what he creates. He finds this a valuable integrating process which, like meditation or prayer, has little to do with other people, but which has its own separate validity. His most significant moments are those in which he attains some new insight, or makes some new discovery; and these moments are chiefly, if not invariably, those in which he is alone.

    —Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

  • Many creative activities are predominantly solitary. They are concerned with self-realization and self-development in isolation, or with finding some coherent pattern in life.

    —Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self

  • When we don’t have the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people in order to feel less anxious or in order to feel alive. When this happens, we’re not able to appreciate who they are. It’s as though we’re using them as spare parts to support our fragile sense of self.

    —Sherry Turkle: Connected, but alone?

  • Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one’s own inner self.

    —Michel de Montaigne

  • The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people.

    —Thomas Merton,No Man Is an Island

  • I could never again see the evening sun fading into oblivion without feeling lonely.

    —Clark E. Moustakas, Loneliness

  • During his hours of bitter loneliness, when he became utterly aware and sensible, he understood the ultimate meaning of being alone. He realized how wrong his sense of values had been and how he had failed to see that the simple, the natural, the homely, the unpretentious things in life are what really matter.

    —Clark E. Moustakas, Loneliness

  • Byrd soon discovered the brain-cracking loneliness of solitary confinement and the loneliness of futile routine. He tried to crowd his days with systematic but meaningful acts. But he found it exceedingly difficult to escape loneliness.

    —Clark E. Moustakas, Loneliness

  • Byrd anticipated the crisis of loneliness. What he had not counted on was how closely a man could come to dying and still not die or want to die.

    —Clark E. Moustakas, Loneliness

  • In spite of sheer concentration and every effort of will power, Byrd could not avoid the terrible evenness and loneliness of silence.

    —Clark E. Moustakas, Loneliness