Norman Douglas Quotes

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up.

Your absence has not taught me how to be alone, it merely has shown that when together we cast a single shadow on the wall

If there is anything good about exile, it is that it teaches one humility. It accelerates one’s drift into isolation, an absolute perspective. Into the condition at which all one is left with is oneself and one’s language, with nobody or nothing in between. Exile brings you overnight where it would normally take a lifetime to go.

In those days, I still thoroughly enjoyed the romance I called "by myself"; I didn't know yet how it gets lonely, picks up a sharp edge later on that ruins a day now and then-- ruins more than that, if you're not careful.

I think a person needs to learn from childhood to find himself alone. It means to not be bored when you’re by yourself, because a person who finds himself bored when alone –as it seems to me– is in danger.

Woe unto him that is never alone, and cannot bear to be alone.

I've led a very isolated existence since I was 6 years old. It's kind of been me and my mind.

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

By nature, I sit alone in a room and type... My goal was never celebrity.

A writer needs a life of introspection.

If you have a trust in and an expectation of your own solitude, everything that you need to know will be revealed to you.

But in the end, in the end one is alone. We are all of us alone. I mean I'm told these days we have to consider ourselves as being in society... but in the end one knows one is alone, that one lives at the heart of a solitude.

Loneliness is such an omnipotent and painful threat to many persons that they have little conception of the positive values of solitude and even, at times, are frightened at the prospect of being alone.

I didn't mind the 23 hours a day solitary confinement for the majority of the time, because after the first few years in prison, when I stopped being angry and started to like myself and understand myself, it was OK. I still enjoy my own company sometimes.

It's OK to know what's best for yourself. That was my biggest issue. I was looking to other people to tell me what I needed. When I finally turned inwards and took responsibility for the way I was feeling, that's when everything started changing.

Making music is an inward and outward gesture at once. I make it because I'm communing with a side of myself that might help me look people in the eye. But at the same time, I'm reaching out, in a way.

Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don’t want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you’re doing here. Believe in kissing.

I am sure of this, that by going much alone a man will get more of a noble courage in thought and word than from all the wisdom that is in books.

The New England spirit does not seek solutions in a crowd; raw light and solitariness are less dreaded than welcomed as enhancers of our essential selves.

And here in my isolation I can grow stronger. Poetry seems to come of itself, without effort, and I need only let myself dream a little while painting to suggest it.

To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude.

Solitude makes us tougher towards ourselves and tenderer towards others. In both ways it improves our character.

Get comfortable with being alone. It will empower you.

And so I learned what solitude really was. It was raw material - awesome, malleable,older than men or worlds or water. And it was merciless - for it let a man become precisely what he alone made of himself.