Tatiana de Rosnay Quotes

You are in the back of your head somewhere and you want to close your eyes and go away.

I'm somewhat in my own cloud.

My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free.

Staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

And I leave my post of observation and find I have had enough of this outside life; I feel that there is nothing more that I can learn here, either now or at any time. And I long to say a last goodbye to everything up here, to go down into my burrow never to return again, let things take their course, and not try to retard them with my profitless vigils.

I do know that I need solitude, not only to write but to nourish myself (being, like most writers, an introvert) so that I do keep trying to write.

If only they would all just leave me alone with my books and my letters, I would be content to let life, and the world pass me by

I'm trying to create a relationship with myself. I feel good being married to myself right now!

We made a film about the need for silence and withdrawal... and here we are at the epicentre of noise and excitement. Life is full of surprises.

Little as she was addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape from the empty noises of her life.

I also like a lot of silence, and when you're touring, it's constantly noise, all the time, you're surrounded with 15 or 20 people the entire time. I find that tough.

In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude.

Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul.

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.

I'm floating inside my skin. I could go on floating like this for days. Right now, the real world with its heartbreak and disappointments is just a pulse against the protective membrane we've drunk ourselves into. It's somewhere outside us, waiting." A Great and Terrible Beauty, Page 141, by

The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.

Between madness and sanity, there is a shifting boundary. It is impossible to explain. Time slows down and you have to try to fill it. You don't have anything but solitude.

Why do you wonder that globetrotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you? The reason that set you wandering is ever at your heels.

Of all the conditions we experience, solitude is perhaps the most misunderstood.

... one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking.

I've never just been able to be alone, and I'm obsessed with being alone and hearing my thoughts. I'm trying to take this alone time — the five minutes I do have a day — to learn as much as I can.

One can run away from anything but oneself.

Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.

When I look back at what I've written and try to explain it, it doesn't help, but it helps to be in a process of writing. It's the same thing with reading - you lose yourself when you read as well. When I was younger I used literature that way, it was just escapism, a tool to run away from things.

They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts.