Matthew Shultz Quotes

I've led a very isolated existence since I was 6 years old. It's kind of been me and my mind.

With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.

It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources.

Somebody's boring me. I think it's me.

You know you lose a lot of social skills if you're a writer. You spend too long alone. And its forced me to address that.

One of the things that is devastating is I realise I haven't been living a different life than when I was, like, 12. I'm shocked at how reclusive I've been since then. I was unaware of it until recently.

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.

What good is sitting all alone in your room?

The time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself.

If you travel too often, you actually come face-to-face with what you're trying to escape. I feel like when I travel alone, sometimes it's like being locked in a hotel room with my own worst enemy.

One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least somebody's listening.

I had friends but I was spending a great deal of my time alone and for me that was vital because there's an awful lot you learn about yourself when you're alone.

When even the most strictly logical mind looks round and investigates the phenomena attending its own existence, perhaps the first fact to attract attention by its strongly marked prominence is the remarkable loneliness of man. He stands alone.

Census figures be damned: If you choose to be alone, you're destined to spend a certain amount of time wondering why.

I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead - and that one was myself.

The feelings of my smallness and my nothingness always kept me good company.

Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.

I was always such a people-watcher. I would sit on street corners alone and watch people and make up stories about them in my head. Then, all of a sudden, I was the one being watched.

When everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself.

The surest cure for vanity is loneliness.

I'm nobody, who are you?

Writing is a tribute to solitude. It is choosing introversion over extroversion, lonely hours/days/weeks/years over fun and sociability.

That moment in 'Broadcast News' where Holly Hunter is told how great it is to be the smartest person in the room, and she cries and says it's awful - I definitely have moments like that sometimes, moments when introspection and drive can be lonely-making. And it doesn't help that I have a partner who is very work-oriented.

I like the idea of isolation. I like the reality of it. You realize what you are... not that the knowledge is inevitably rewarding.