Susan Orlean Quotes

She knows there's more to life, and she's scared of ending up alone

I don't like being left to my own thoughts.

I never feel more alone than when I'm traveling. Alone and, to some extent, helpless. The world expects a certain level of competence and can be merciless when this expectation is unmet.

Loneliness and rootlessness are just symptoms of an insecurity that assails us all when hitting this midlife moment. The world appears intent on blanking you out.

I can relate to having those people in your life that you feel are moving on to this great, big, normal life and you're like, 'What's wrong with me?'

LA is a harsh city to be in when you're a little girl from the South, and you have absolutely no idea what you're doing and you are thinking, 'Am I making, have I made a massive mistake? I don't have money to move back home. My parents are not on board with this. What do I do?'

And yet I understood the alienation of being around others who couldn't really see you or chose not to. I'd felt the self-loathing that came with being a fraud, protraying an image of what you wished you could be but weren't. I'd lived with the fear that people you loved might turn away from you if they ever got to know the true person hidden inside.

She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.

I don't want to disappear.

An entire life of solitude contradicts the purpose of our being, since death itself is scarcely an idea of more terror.

Do you sometimes look up from the computer and look around the room and know you are alone, I mean really know it, then feel scared ?

Isn't it fascinating how long a few minutes seem when you are completely alone with not a familiar face in sight?

I have a fear of letting my mind wander. I'm afraid it might not come back.

I was an only child. I did have kind of like a lonely existence.

Then I glanced at the ring on my finger. The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever. I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from? I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away. So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light. You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark. I miss you dreadfully!

Something like fear chilled me as I sat there in the small hours alone-I say alone, for one who sits by a sleeper is indeed alone; perhaps more alone than he can realise.

There isn't a thought in my head I care to be alone with for more than five minutes.

I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here.

I felt more than ever the necessity of my mission. But I went home out of spirits, I hardly know why. I must work by myself all life long.

Just being in a room with myself is almost more stimulation than I can bear.

I genuinely believed no one would want to marry me. I am difficult to live with. I'm selfish, quite weird and I need time on my own to think - and then I work all night long. That is difficult for someone to deal with. And it would drive me mad - I could never be my own girlfriend!

You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own.

She had never before minded being alone. Now she dreaded it. When she was alone now she felt so dreadfully alone.

I am not sure what lonliness is," she said. "If it is not literally being solitary, is it the fear of solitude, of being alone with oneself? I feel no such fear. I like being alone." "What do you fear then?" he asked her. She glanced briefly at him and smiled, a fragile expression that spoke for itself even before she found words. "Never finding myself again.

All my life I had feared imprisonment, the nun's cell, the hospital bed, the places where one faced the self without distraction, without the crutches of other people.