Richard Ford Quotes

I have not a desire but a need for solitude.

I spend an awful lot of time by myself and enjoy that.

I make a genuine distinction between loneliness and aloneness. I know what each is like. There are times I'm lonely. But there are also many times when I need to be alone, when I don't want the feeling of someone else in the house other than the cats.

A month alone would make me so happy. Not good for my dating prospects.

I am no longer alone with myself, and I can only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude. This is the shadow side of the fortune of love.

At any moment solitude may put on the face of loneliness.

I need, absolutely, to be alone.

I was never less alone than when by myself.

I live alone, so I don't really talk to anyone once I'm home. I have some silent nights.

Sometimes I get lonely, but it's nice to be alone.

I always have been a private person. I like to be alone. When I was a little girl I used to listen to the radio and just be by myself.

Solitude vivifies; isolation kills.

I need my time to be lonely.

One of the odd enjoyments in life is to be alone in a room full of people. To have them there as unknowing human filler in your wide shot.

You may not enjoy loneliness, because loneliness is sad. But solitude is something else; solitude is what you look forward to when you want to be alone, when you want to be with yourself. So, solitude is something we all need from time to time.

There's a difference between loneliness and solitude. You pursue solitude, I think. But loneliness is a completely different isolating thing.

Woe unto him that is never alone, and cannot bear to be alone.

being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.

It's odd how different a house feels when one is alone in it. It makes it easier to think rather private thoughts.

No man is an island, as they say. No. I've tried it. I've gone on retreats at various times in my life for three or four or five days. I was desperate to get out of there and talk to somebody. But I fly fish a lot, and I can only do that really by myself. I find I'm never lonesome when I'm on a river, far from it, but it's a lonely practice.

Solitude is very sad, Too much company twice as bad.

Solitude is considered un-American.

Isolation must precede true society.

I think there is no way to write about being alone. To write is to tell something to somebody to communicate to others. . . . Solitude is noncommunication, the absence of others, the presence of a self sufficient to itself.

Whoever gives himself up to solitude, Ah! he is soon alone.