loneliness

Loneliness was a full-body sensation, an anti-exhilaration, from his core outward.

He lived on, miserable and misunderstood, as before, and increasingly lonely. One cannot write those words too often: Maurice__ loneliness: it increased.

It's sad to fall asleep. It separates people. Even when you're sleeping together, you're all alone.

Mostly she just missed Vaughn. Missed all those quiet, unspectacular moments that, when added up, showed how entwined their lives had become. And right now, she missed being able to phone him, because it would be so easy to tap in the eleven digits that would put his voice on the line. __race, about bloody time,_ he__ say, and make it sound like an endearment.But she couldn__ call Vaughn, because she__ left him. Which was a novelty, until Grace remembered that he__ have left her eventually if she hadn__ done it first. She was never the one. She was never even the one before the one. She was the girl who seemed like a good idea at the time, but ultimately was just a phase that people went through.That was the way it had always been. Friends and lovers came and went because there was something about her which repelled them, and she didn__ have a clue what it was. It was a mystery that she couldn__ solve on her own, and there wasn__ a single person in the world who could help . . .

He thought of night coming on. He thought of the loneliness of tonight, this first night in the ground. This, he thought, was the moment when the dead must first feel truly alone. This was the moment when the dead, in loneliness, feel the first stirrings of the long penance of decay. This was the moment when the dead realize the truth: This is it, it will never be different.To be dead, he thought, that was to know that nothing would ever be different.

Turn your loneliness into singing and praying, and you shall realize that you are never alone at all

But it's funny how even after all these years you find yourself wondering just how well you know anyone. Hell, we've all been tight since we we're kids - been through a lot together - but we still have secrets, don't we? All of us. None of us are ever exactly, precisely what we claim to be, are we? We're one way with some people, another way with other people, maybe another way still when we're all alone. That's what it boils down to fellas. At night, when you're lying there in bed looking at the ceiling, remembering the day, thinking back through things you did and what lies ahead, when it's just you and whatever god you pray to in the dark ...that's when all the masks are peeled away and it's just you. Just you..., and whoever...or whatever you are.

Don't you understand? Listen carefully to what I'm saying. If you do, you'll get it. you can grasp this easily. In short...in short, I shut myself in because I'm lonely. Because I don't want to face any more loneliness, I shut myself away.

If I can teach myself the art of loneliness, then perhaps the art of writing will come more easily to me.

I see nothing that can unite us under the auspices of innocence and honor," he wrote to her. "In the future you will be alone, although at your husband's side, and I will ab alone in the midst of the world. The glory of having conquered ourselves will be our only consolation.

That's the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. People change the subject when they see you coming. And then sometimes those very same people come into your study and tell you the most remarkable things. There's a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn't really expect to find it, either.

I grow old _ I grow old _ I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

I__ good when I__ alone. I__ comfortable when I__ alone. I can sit and do lots of things all by myself. Sex included.

She understood how a world jammed with phones, email, and faxes could still leave you feeling utterly alone.

Only boxers can understand the loneliness of tennis players - and yet boxers have their corner men and managers. Even a boxer's opponent provides a kind of companionship, someone he can grapple with and grunt at. In tennis you stand face-to-face with the enemy, trade blows with him, but never touch him or talk to him, or anyone else. The rules forbid a tennis player from even talking to his coach while on the court. People sometimes mention the track-and-field runner as a comparably lonely figure, but I have to laugh. At least the runner can feel and smell his opponents. They're inches away. In tennis you're on an island. Of all the games men and women play, tennis is the closest to solitary confinement....

Not belonging is a terrible feeling. It feels awkward and it hurts, as if you were wearing someone else's shoes.

A gem, like you, is made beautiful by being polished. It's not an easy undertaking, but a stone that exists undisturbed among others just is...but the most beautiful stand out because they face being alone, endure hardships and learn from what challenges them. Suffering purifies and makes beautiful, but only if the gem can shine.

And she was well-enough acquainted with loneliness to understand that the worst part wasn't having nobody caring for you - it was having nobody to care for.