Janet Frame Quotes

How often, when we have been nearest each other bodily, have we really been farthest off! Our tongues were the witty foils with which we fenced each other off.

We know so little about each other. We lie mostly submerged, like ice floes, with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white.

Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.

We're all torn between the desire for privacy and the fear of lonliness. We need each other and we need to get away from each other. We need proximity and distance, conversation and silence. We almost always get more of each than we want at any one time.

All men were alien one to another, at times, not only aliens.

But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, And roam along, the world's tired denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless.

It is sad that the air is the only thing we share. No matter how close we get to each other, there is always air between us.

We all, sometimes, leave each other there under the skies, and we never understand why.

I figured being a bed salesman was a job of biblically bad paradox. I mean, here he was, forced to stand for eight or nine hours a day, and the whole time he’s surrounded by beds. And not only that, he’s surrounded by shoppers who see the beds and can’t help but think, Man, I’d love to lie down on that bed for a second. So not only does he have to stop himself from lying down, but he has to stop everyone else from doing it, too. I knew if I were him, I would be desperate for human company.

I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.

Now we're like planets, holding to each other from a great distance. [...] Now we're hundreds of miles apart, our short arms keep us lonely, no one hears what's in my head. [...] It's March, even the birds don't know what to do with themselves.

Are you alone?" So that's what this call was about. For some reason, the question made my throat tighten. "No," I said, "Elvis is here. Would you like to talk to him?

What could be lonelier than trying to communicate?

She watched the prairies the rivers, the towns slipping past at an untouchable distance below - and she noted that the sense of detachment one feels when looking at the earth from a plane was the same sense she felt when looking at people: only her distance from people seemed longer. - Dagny Taggart

I'm tired and I want to rest; I want to get out of this and go lie down somewhere, off where it's dark and no one speaks. Forever.

They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn't laugh or be sad with him.

The lifetime we've left behind with strangers Promises and lies both have their dangers. I just can't be wrong enough and I can't hide for long enough So far away, but I still feel your pain.

I think it's strange to live in a house with someone you cannot talk to-especially when that someone is your father-and the thought makes me a little sad.

People always get tired of one another. I grow tired of myself whenever I am left alone for ten minutes, and I am certain that I am fonder of myself than anyone can be of another person.

To talk, simply to talk! It sounds so little, and how much it is! When you have existed to the brink of middle age in bitter loneliness, among people to whom your true opinion on every subject on earth is blasphemy, the need to talk is the greatest of all needs.

To be without sympathy is to be alone in the world--without friends or country, home or kindred.

Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unite him with others; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity.

Great talkers are trying to fill the gap between themselves and others, but only widen it.

If you lie to your husband - even about something so banal as how much you drink - each lie is a brick in a wall going up between you, and when he tells you he loves you, it's deflected away.