Tomas Transtromer Quotes

I looked into that empty bottle and I saw myself.

For hours, for days, for years, she had wandered endlessly within herself but never met anybody, nobody.

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

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

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

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

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

When a man is extremely lonely, he starts discovering himself.

You discover who you truly are only when you live alone.

In those days, I still thoroughly enjoyed the romance I called "by myself"; I didn't know yet how it gets lonely, picks up a sharp edge later on that ruins a day now and then-- ruins more than that, if you're not careful.

It seems as though I've always been,somebody outside looking in,well, here I am for all of them to bleed,but they can't take my heart from me,and they can't bring me to my knees,they'll never know the real me.

The value of solitude - one of its values - is, of course, that there is nothing to cushion against attacks from within, just as there is nothing to help balance at times of particular stress or depression.

Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home.

And so I learned what solitude really was. It was raw material - awesome, malleable,older than men or worlds or water. And it was merciless - for it let a man become precisely what he alone made of himself.

When you are with everyone but me, you're with no one. When you are with no one but me, you're with everyone. Instead of being so bound up with everyone, be everyone. When you become that many, you're nothing. Empty.

Oshima's silent for a time as he gazes at the forest, eyes narrowed. Birds are flitting from one branch to the next. His hands are clasped behind his head. "I know how you feel," he finally says. "But this is something you have to work out on your own. Nobody can help you. That's what love's all about, Kafka. You're the one having those wonderful feelings, but you have to go it alone as you wander through the dark. Your mind and body have to bear it all. All by yourself.

I'm nobody, who are you?

I can't tell you what your purpose is, that's got to come from you.

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

I look in the mirror, and what I see is someone who has never grown up - a crashing sentimentalist who alternates between great heights and black depths.

For me, doing an interview with someone is like having therapy.

I think that when I got to a certain age, it was important to me to sort of analyze my relationship with myself and my past.

I enjoy exploring and finding myself.

I used to say it was painful to write lyrics about myself and looking inward.