Alice Walker Quotes

As a writer, I can live somewhat independently, occupying nooks and crannies and finding meaning there. I can even live in my mind a good portion of most days.

The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.

I've always lived in my head, which is very easy to do when you live and work in a city.

In solitude, where we are least alone.

The solitary side of our nature demands leisure for reflection upon subjects on which the dash and whirl of daily business, so long as its clouds rise thick about us, forbid the intellect to fasten itself.

A certain degree of solitude seems necessary to the full growth and spread of the highest mind; and therefore must a very extensive intercourse with men stifle many a holy germ, and scare away the gods, who shun the restless tumult of noisy companies and the discussion of petty interests.

I like my quiet time. There is a writer's sensibility in me sometimes, where I step back.

I am working out the vocabulary of my silence.

I wanted to hear my own whispers in the next room and know that I was thinking of me.

No one could have fathomed what a life he'd led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.

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.

I didn't walk over and talk to him, though, not then. If I needed the time for a tree branch to become just a tree branch again and the wind to become just the wind, then a boy, most of all, needed some time to be only a boy.

It occurs to her that there is one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are.

I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, And accrue what I hear into myself...and let sound contribute toward me.

I love to be alone with life. I love to study simple things: the light as it filters in a window; the music of a room full of people chatting; a horizon.

We're each alone inside our heads, some more so than others.

Amid those scenes of solitude... the mind is cast into the contemplation of eternal things.

We are all prone to the malady of the introvert who with the manifold spectacle of the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes only upon the emptiness within.

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.

While I like people, I do also like being alone in a room and seeing what you can do with a particular theme or subject.

I love silence. And one of the paradoxes about the way I live and also about my work is that definitely one of the reasons I went into music, and especially into composing is that I love setting up an environment where I can be by myself for long periods of time and have everything as quiet as possible, either to think about sound, or to think about ideas, or just to focus on things that are important to me.

I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.

A WISE MAN never enjoys himself so much, or a FOOL so little, as when he is alone.

I have no choice sometimes, but there's something about being alone. When I'm alone I might not speak for 24 hours, but you're totally seeing things. It's a pretty cool experience.

She felt some measure of relief knowing that in the very least, on the open road she would have some time to think.