Solitude is not the same as loneliness, though they often get confused. This collection explores both — the ache of isolation and the quiet power of being comfortable in your own company. Some of these quotes will make you want to reach out to someone; others will make you want to sit with yourself a while longer.
“No one chooses to raise children alone.”
“I would point out that I'm an actress for a reason! If I were popular in high school, I would have considered another career because I wouldn't have been alone in my room, making up other characters for myself. I definitely had growing pains. The popular kids didn't want anything to do with the girl who was starting the drama club.”
“I used to think as I looked out on the Hollywood night, 'There must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me dreaming of being a movie star.' But I'm not going to worry about them. I'm dreaming the hardest.”
“Can anyone understand how it is to have lived in the White House and then, suddenly, to be living alone as the President's widow?”
“I had a very happy childhood, but I wasn't that happy a child. I liked being alone and creating characters and voices. I think that's when your creativity is developed, when you're young. I liked the world of the imagination because it was an easy place to go to.”
“When I decided to be a singer, my mother warned me I'd be alone a lot. Basically we all are.”
“Sometimes, when I'm alone, I put on six inch heels and wear nothing else and dance around in front of the mirror and do my little stripper dance.”
“If I want to be alone, some place I can write, I can read, I can pray, I can cry, I can do whatever I want - I go to the bathroom.”
“Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.”
“Alone we can do so little together we can do so much.”
“You have to respect your audience. Without them, you're essentially standing alone, singing to yourself.”
“An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.”
“I can work myself up into a fearful, paralyzing state of mind that can last for days, weeks even months where I feel mad, totally isolated and alone, overwhelmed and completely out of control.”
“He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.”
“In truth, I am a single mother. But I don't feel alone at all in parenting my daughter. Krishna has a whole other side of her family who loves her, too. And so Krishna is parented by me, but also by her grandmother and aunts and cousins and uncles and friends.”
“I need to do things on my own, need to be left alone.”