Conrad Aiken Quotes

The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.

The stars are forth, the moon above the tops Of the snow-shining mountains--beautiful! I linger yet with nature, for the night Hath been to me a more familiar face Than that of man, and in her starry shade Of dim and solitary loveliness I learned the language of another world.

All through the deep blue night The fountain sang alone; It sang to the drowsy heart of the satyr carved in stone. The fountain sang and sang But the satyr never stirred- Only the great white moon In the empty heaven heard.

But some nights, I must tell you, I go down there after everyone has fallen asleep. I swim back and forth in the echoing blackness. I sing a love song as well as I can, lost for a while in the home of the rain.

The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.

A great reader seldom recognizes his solitude.

I had become, with the approach of night, once more aware of loneliness and time - those two companions without whom no journey can yield us anything.

Those reflective moments for me usually come from loneliness and separation from people.

So, now I shall talk every night. To myself. To the moon. I shall walk, as I did tonight, jealous of my loneliness, in the blue-silver of the cold moon, shining brilliantly on the drifts of fresh-fallen snow, with the myriad sparkles. I talk to myself and look at the dark trees, blessedly neutral. So much easier than facing people, than having to look happy, invulnerable, clever.

No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this windy place.

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

During the days in detention, I thought most about the moon.

I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain - and back in rain. I have out walked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet. When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly light, One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night.

I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on, The windows and the stars illumined, one by one, The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily, And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass; And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass, I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight, And build me stately palaces by candlelight.

I am suddenly left alone again on the sunny path, with a memory of the rain.

Mineral cactai, quicksilver lizards in the adobe walls, the bird that punctures space, thirst, tedium, clouds of dust, impalpable epiphanies of wind. The pines taught me to talk to myself. In that garden I learnedto send myself off. Later there were no gardens.

Under my head till morning; but the rain, Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh, Upon the glass and listen for reply.

There is nothing more alone than being in a car at night in the rain.

What do you do there, moon, in the sky? Tell me what you do, silent moon. When evening comes you rise and go contemplating wastelands; then you set.

But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?

I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night.

Some nights in the midst of this loneliness I swung among the scattered stars at the end of the thin thread of faith alone.

Mirrors are there when we are and yet they never give anything back to us but our own image. Never, never shall we know what they are when they are alone or what is behind them.

Solitude may rust your words.