Alanis Morissette Quotes

When I play games, I'll make up little stories for just anything. It's almost the game of making up background stories for people you see on the street. You know what I mean? I wasn't exactly the popular kid in school growing up, so I found myself really observing people, and watching how they interact, and how they react to things.

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.

We've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people oughta do is get outside their own house and look in for a change.

I was painfully shy, and I had tremendous difficulty making friends. So, lacking friends, I watched other people. Watching is something all writers must do, and it was in junior high that I learned to do it.

It is something I recognise in myself. I do eavesdrop. I do people-watch, a lot.

I definitely am more observational of the people around me and how they interact and less introspective about myself.

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.

I wish that people had an opportunity to watch me 24/7, like on 'Big Brother.' You'd see a person who is quiet and reserved and very analytical - a huge observer.

I think in many ways, I'm sort of a blank canvas, because in many ways, I'm just observing the world and the people around me and their characters and letting them kind of explode off me and to find out why they're doing what they're doing. But then every once in awhile, I get to take on a whole new character.

What good is sitting all alone in your room?

I just think the more we're observed by other people, the less we can observe them in order to play them and find their true condition.

I'm curious about people. That's what I've always done since I've been a small boy. I'm curious about others.

I think to be writer you have to enjoy being alone. I was a loner as a teenager and was always drawn to characters in books and films who were at the fringes.

I have a huge, active imagination, and I think I'm really scared of being alone; because if I'm left to my own devices, I'll just turn into a madwoman.

I've spent my life alone in a room with a typewriter.

I like to think I'm a listener, and I'm fascinated by observing people - I suppose you just lock that in.

We are never the same with others as when we are alone. We are different, even when we are in the dark with them.

I was an only child with a lot of time to kill. I suspect a lot of writers are only children, or only children become writers because it's a way of being alone.

You must look into people as well as at them.

I've always been a keen observer of people.

Being an outsider makes you a really good writer.

I walked around the block twice, passed 200 people and failed to see a human being.

I want to know what you're thinking, you want to know what I'm thinking. But we're alone. In our own minds. We're trapped in this sort of isolation.

I'm concerned with the lost, the lonely, the shy. I think shyness is in some ways more widespread now than formerly. I used to be shy myself. Of course, you can't be me now and remain shy, but I remember very well what it felt like.

I mean one of the things about being alone is that you've no people to define yourself off, I mean, people are like all-round mirrors, because let's face it, we don't often see ourselves all round in a mirror anyway, do we.