loneliness

But in her loneliness in the palace she learned to know him, they learned to know each other, and she discovered with great delight that one does not love one__ children just because they are one__ children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.

Try listening to yourself sometime, alone in a transient room in a strange town. The worst is when you draw a blank, and the ash-blonde ghosts of the past carry on long twittering long-distance calls with your inner ear, and there's no way to hang up.

Wouldn't it be nice to be done with it? To be done with sex and longing? Mitchell could almost imagine pulling it off, sitting on a bridge at night with the Seine flowing by. He looked up at all the lighted windows along the river's arc. He thought of all the people going to sleep or reading or listening to music, all the lives contained by a great city like this, and, floating up in his mind, rising just above the rooftops, he tried to feel, to vibrate among, all those million tremulous souls. He was sick of craving, of wanting, of hoping, of losing.

What does it feel like to be lonely? It feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast.

God doesn't promise us an easy life. But He does promise to love us and never leave us, no matter what happens.

No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else

To be so lonelyyou told yourself you liked to be this way& almost believed it was true.

Sometimes the loneliness had been almost too much, he thought, and always at those times he had found comfort in the woods, where he said nothing. He wondered if the others were still gloomy; no one spoke of it any longer. He smiled as he thought of how the women had wet and screamed and straddle behind him, I want to run to catch up once more.

For some years he had felt weighing on him the burden of loneliness which sometimes overwhelms old bachelors. He had been strong, active and cheerful, spending his days in sport, and his evenings in amusement. Now he was growing dull, and no longer took interest in anything. Exercise tired him, suppers and even dinners made him ill, while women bored him as much as they had once amused him.

Everyone here seems to know exactly what they need, but I leave without a thing.

It is in the company of others that one can be really lonely, for then one's personality is forced openly to try to express what it's separate individuality is.

Lupita thought that people who didn__ dance were selfish and lonely.

Poem to Be Read at 3:00 A.M.by Donald JusticeExcepting the dinerOn the outskirtsThe town of Ladoraat 3 A.M.Was dark butFor my headlightsAnd up inOne second-story roomA single lightWhere someoneWas sick orPerhaps readingAs I drove pastAt seventyNot thinkingThis poemIs for whoeverHad the light on

Well, I__ just going to say it.I__ listening, Louis said.I wonder if you would consider coming to my house sometimes to sleep with me.

She had said that she preferred to be alone for so many years that it was now one of those things that equally well might or might not be true.

A teacher I once had told me that the older you get, the lonelier you become and the deeper the love you need. Loneliness creates an appetite for deeper love, and the entire predicament deepens. And as a result of suffering, your capacity to love deeply increases.

We've been very lonely, but we had it easy. Because death is so heavy - we, too young to know about it, couldn't handle it. After this you and I may end up seeing nothing but suffering, difficulty and ugliness, but if only you'll agree to it, I want for us to go on to more difficult places, happier places, what ever comes, together. I want you to make the decision after you're completely better, so take your time thinking about it. In the mean time, though, don't disappear on me.

Loneliness is personal, and it is also political. Loneliness is collective; it is a city. As to how to inhabit it, there are no rules and nor is there any need to feel shame, only to remember that the pursuit of individual happiness does not trump or excuse our obligations to each another. We are in this together, this accumulation of scars, this world of objects, this physical and temporary heaven that so often takes on the countenance of hell. What matters is kindness; what matters is solidarity. What matters is staying alert, staying open, because if we know anything from what has gone before us, it is that the time for feeling will not last.