Jamaica Kincaid Quotes

For me, books have always been a way to feel less alone while being alone. Perhaps if I was depressed and isolated, just communicating with these authors through their sentences helped me.

I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me.

Solitude is pleasant. Loneliness is not.

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

Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves.

I make a genuine distinction between loneliness and aloneness. I know what each is like. There are times I'm lonely. But there are also many times when I need to be alone, when I don't want the feeling of someone else in the house other than the cats.

Reading a good book helps us to feel un-alone.

When I was growing up, the place I felt least alone was when I was reading.

People are lonely. They want company and your book can provide them company and a little bit of hope. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Everybody has something that chews them up and, for me, that thing was always loneliness. The cinema has the power to make you not feel lonely, even when you are.

People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about.

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.

I don't like to be alone, but I do cherish the moments that I'm alone with a good book.

Solitude vivifies; isolation kills.

For most of my childhood, even through college, there was a lot of feeling very alone. I loved TV, so when those very special episodes of anything came, or when certain characters reflected the world I lived in, I felt connected.

Books should be right up there with exercise and diet as something that don't just entertain us but heal us. They tell us we are not alone and fix the pieces of us that can be shattered by reality. They are teachers, and they are friends, and we should never contemplate a world - or a life - without them.

Far from 'rotting my brain,' as I was often told would happen, TV helped me feel less alone at a time when I spent so much time alone.

As long as we have books, we are not alone.

I write because I want to end my loneliness. Books make people less alone. That, before and after everything else, is what books do. They show us that conversations are possible across distances.

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.

For me a book has always been a chance to reach out and connect to someone and not be alone.

I have only one friend, and that is echo. Why is it my friend? Because I love my sorrow, and echo does not take it away from me. I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night. Why is it my confidant? Because it remains silent.

The movies were so healing for me because I had such an isolated, lonely childhood. Going to the movies and having the lights go down, you disappear. If you have esteem issues, suddenly you're in a void where nobody can see you. You are just by yourself in that darkness, and your loneliness is cured.

I like being alone and I think this movie, as much as it is an investigation of connection and people bonding, I also think it's just as much about loneliness.

What good is sitting all alone in your room?