“The years passed like the steps of a staircase leading lower and lower. I did not walk any more in the sun or hear the songs of larks like crystal fountains playing against the sky. No hand enfolded mine in the warm clasp of love. My thoughts were again solitary, disintegrate, disharmonious – the music gone. I lived alone in a few pleasant rooms, feeling my life run out aimlessly with the tedious hours: the life of an old maid ran out of my fingertips.”

“One of the greatest things that can happen to you is loneliness”

“The person that fights for every minute of his time will have to be lonely most times”

“They were all in it together. Together, they could all savor success. They all labored under the same exhaustion. It was therefore a shame she felt so alone.”

“All the pain I put you throughImploded, exploded and demolished youWhat did you do to deserve all thisBut love me, this endlessly broken abyss ?!Now, nothing have I becomeI’ve lost myself and have gone numbAnd here I am wondering How you are and how you’ve beenAre you happy through all the pain?Did you manage to break that chainThe One from which you suffocated When I ended us, unappreciated Has your heart at all mendedFrom all the blows I extended?Do I ever cross your mind?Do you still hate me, after all this time?I am deserving of all of thisOf all the pain and lack of blissI became the reason whyYour glowing eyes still cry and cryI won’t ask for your forgiveness My lack of you is my deepest illnessForgiveness given to me would be a crimeBut even if you did, I wouldn’t give myself mineRegret fills my very essenceMy whole being will miss your presenceI lost my singularity of creationI just wish for you more appreciation Loneliness my bitter friendWe’ll be together until the endA long life of being hollowA continuum of time in endless sorrow”

“All these openings for closeness–all these humans with their disappointments and their desperate hearts, but it’s so much easier, so convenient, to blame emotional distance on a lack of time.”

“Abortive time: unwilling to tarryDaylight begins to hide into the heatHis moonless night desires to be starryThose lame knees want to break down on his feetFrom the poem Sonnet For A Man (Part I)”

“It’s how I fill the time when nothing’s happening. Thinking too much, flirting with melancholy.”

“Maybe reading was just a way to make her feel less alone, to keep her company. When you read something you are stopped, the moment is stayed, you can sometimes be there more fully than you can in your real life.”

“The writer’s curse is that even in solitude, no matter its duration, he never grows lonely or bored.”

“I’m not much but I’m all I have.”

“I’ve always loved the night, when everyone else is asleep and the world is all mine. It’s quiet and dark—the perfect time for creativity.”

“This was what I came to found. The conquest of loneliness was the missing link that was one day going to make a decent novelist out of me. If you are out here and cannot close off the loves and hates of all that back there in the real world the memories will overtake you and swamp you and wilt your tenacity. Tenacity stamina… close off to everything and everyone but your writing. That s the bloody price. I don t know maybe it’s some kind of ultimate selfishness. Maybe it’s part of the killer instinct. Unless you can stash away and bury thoughts of your greatest love you cannot sustain the kind of concentration that breaks most men trying to write a book over a three or four year period.”

“Great growth comes from loneliness. You have time to develop, dwell in your own mind and go a bit mad. All the great people are a bit mad. That’s good to remember. Don’t escape it. Great growth comes from time spent in foreign lands, watching foreign people with foreign cultures. It makes you forget about your own land and race and town for a while. Great growth also comes from rooting yourself into one place from time to time. Unpack your bags, get a nice bed, a bookshelf, some friends. Learn to show up, keep in touch, stick around. Growth comes in all sorts of forms and shapes, everywhere at all times, and it’s yours to take and consume. Do what ought to be done. Here and now, to get you somewhere — anywhere.”

“Know that you will eventually have to leave everything behind; the writing will demand it of you.”