Robert M. Pirsig Quotes

Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.

I aspire only to silence.

There's a difference between solitude and loneliness. I can understand the concept of being a monk for a while.

I enjoy my own thoughts sometimes.

When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop. Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign is solitude.

I love to sit on my own and think, not to be photographed all the time.

When you meditate, go into the solitude of a forest, or a quiet corner, and enter into the chamber of your heart. And always keep your power of discrimination awake.

I must stay alone and know that I am alone to contemplate and feel nature in full.

The appetite for silence is seldom an acquired taste.

How dear to the mind of the sage are the thoughts that are bred in loneliness; for there is as it were music at his heart, and he talketh within him as with friends.

Being alone has a power over me that never fails. My interior dissolves (for the time being only superficially) and is ready to release what lies deeper. When I am willfully alone, a slight ordering of my interior begins to take place and I need nothing more.

The heart beats louder and the soul hears quicker in silence and solitude.

But for me I think it's just about taking that time of reflection and contemplation. That's probably my process in every decision that I make: to make sure that I spend time just with myself, and really times of silence and mediation to go through that process; and music is a big part of that as well.

Solitude is such a potential thing. We hear voices in solitude, we never hear in the hurry and turmoil of life; we receive counsels and comforts, we get under no other condition.

Nor has he lived in vain, who from his cradle to his grave has passed his life in seclusion.

I want to be alone with my thought.

Each one of us needs time and space for recollection, meditation and calmness.... Thanks be to God that this is so! In fact, this need tells us that we are not made for work alone, but also to think, to reflect or even simply to follow with our minds and our hearts a tale, a story in which to immerse ourselves, in a certain sense to lose ourselves to find ourselves subsequently enriched.

What we really have to do is take a day and sit down and think. The world is not going to end or fall apart. Jobs won't be lost. Kids will not run crazy in one day. Lovers won't stop speaking to you. Husbands and wives are not going to disappear. Just take that one day and think. Don't read. Don't write. No television, no radio, no distractions. Sit down and think. . . . Go sit in a church, or in the park, or take a long walk and think. Call it a healing day.

You grow your best thoughts in silence, solitude, and meditation. When you relax and think deeply, you are giving your inmost powers their best opportunity to disclose themselves.

I have to stay alone in order to fully contemplate and feel nature.

It is important from time to time to slow down, to go away by yourself, and simply be.

'The Machinist' changed me. I learned that I really enjoy, literally, not saying a damned word for days at a time, except for what was in the scene. Whole days of... nothing. Just... standing still. I know a lot of people found it bizarre, because they'd be standing right next to me thinking, 'Why aren't we talking? What's going on?'

With Jackson there was quiet solitude. Just to sit and look at the landscape. An inner quietness. After dinner, to sit on the back porch and look at the light. No need for talking. For any kind of communication.

Ultimately when I gave up the use of motorized vehicles, I walked everywhere, from town to town, across states and two continents. When I stopped talking, I mean literally I stopped speaking. I took a complete vow of silence.

One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.