Elizabeth Strout Quotes

Man's loneliness is but his fear of life.

How one hates to think of oneself as alone. How one avoids it. It seems to imply rejection or unpopularity.

I had a fear of being alone.

I can't be alone.

My day is spent hiding from people.

I think everyone kinda feels a little out place sometimes.

I never felt like I belong to anything - to any groups of friends. I never really had that.

I think I was a pretty anxious dreamer, maybe a fundamentally lonely kid.

From the time I was little, I always felt like an outsider. I always felt nervous and uncomfortable with myself.

Fear is the loneliest feeling. You can be in a throng of people, but if you're afraid, you're on your own.

All my life I had feared imprisonment, the nun's cell, the hospital bed, the places where one faced the self without distraction, without the crutches of other people.

I don't know if anyone will ever sit beside me on a plane again.

I don't like being in houses alone.

I don't like being left to my own thoughts.

I have lived so long among people who do not understand me, been so long accustomed to refrain and disguise myself for fear of being laughed at, that I have grown as difficult to come at as a snail in a shell; and what is worse, I cannot come out of my shell when I wish it.

As a young man, I felt a need to communicate with somebody or something, but it seemed in my own particular environment that that wasn't an option. On the other hand, I probably lacked the courage to do so, even if it was an option.

People come up to me all the time. If I'm with friends or in a crowd, I'm fine, but if I'm by myself, I get afraid because people are nuts.

I've always felt myself to be an outsider. I've always felt awkward.

My family moved from California to New Jersey in the beginning of my sophomore year of high school. I will never forget the first day in a new school, walking into the cafeteria during lunch and not knowing a single soul. I didn't feel confident enough to share a seat at just anyone's table.

When you're surrounded by all these people, it can be even lonelier than when you're by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don't feel like you can trust anybody or talk to anybody, you feel like you're really alone.

Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.

My upbringing has given me sympathy for the idea of isolation and what it is to be a new person in the room, where everyone else has some amount of familiarity and comfort.

I hate being alone, even for 10 minutes.

I had no friends. I worried a lot.

I never feel more alone than when I'm traveling. Alone and, to some extent, helpless. The world expects a certain level of competence and can be merciless when this expectation is unmet.