Russell Banks Quotes

I get a friend to travel with me... I need somebody to bring me back to who I am. It's hard to be alone.

A man is never completely alone in this world. At the worst, he has the company of a boy, a youth, and by and by a grown man - the one he used to be.

When everything is lonely I can be my best friend.

If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in poor company.

If you can't be with yourself, you'll never learn to be with anyone else.

Reminiscence and self-parody are part of remaining true to oneself.

If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.

When you have a lot of solitude, any living thing becomes a companion.

As I've gotten older I've occasionally found myself nostalgic for earlier periods of solitude, though I realize that's also likely a false nostalgia, as I know there was nothing I wanted more during those periods than to not be alone, whatever that means.

We do not mind our not arriving anywhere nearly so much as our not having any company on the way.

I'm just trying desperately to hang on to my true friends. Like Jon Voight. We laugh all the time at how stupid we are.

If we don't know how to be alone, we'll only know how to be lonely.

When you're 14 and you're with your friends, you laugh about really stupid stuff, but as you get older, the laughter inside you dies. When you're older, you need a bit of help.

It takes effort to not be lonely.

I don't really have a best friend.

I've never been without a dog. I've made trips across the country with a dog. I've been in that angst of loneliness, where you're really alone in the universe, except for the dog.

A hunted man sometimes wearies of distrust and longs for friendship.

I've grown tired of traveling alone, won't you ride with me?

One must accept the fact that we have only one companion in this world, a companion who accompanies us from the cradle to the grave - our own self. Get on good terms with that companion - learn to live with yourself.

I need someone like me.

When you are alone, you have all the time in the world to practice whistling like a bird. When there is no one in the world you can turn to, a horse or .even a lion may give you companionship. When you don't know if there is anyone in the world like you, you seek contact with something living however you can

People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends: is that why my flesh is so naked?

My shadow serves as the friend I crave

No person loving or admiring himself is alone.

I had already found that it was not good to be alone, and so I made companionship with what there was around me, sometimes with the universe and sometimes with my own insignificant self; but my books were always my friends, let fail all else.