Overcoming Isolation Quotes

Why do I write? It's not that I want people to think I am smart, or even that I am a good writer. I write because I want to end my loneliness.

I've not been able to avoid periods of time where I felt super-lonely. Luckily, I have a side that is able to always see the glass as half-full.

I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stunned by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, "Hi." They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word.

It's funny, because my last record was a lot about isolation and people living in separate worlds that other people can't even understand, which drug addiction is the perfect negative example of.

There is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison; there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think that we live in alienation.

I actually had another motivation for letting Steven [Sebring] film us. After I'd been out of the public eye for 16 years, lost my friends and lost my husband, some of my confidence had been undermined. Steven made the process of filming fun; I could pretend that we were in something like Don't Look Back.

To be labeled as a strong woman when you feel vulnerable is a strange place to be, because then you're, like, "Oh, I have to be strong now. But I don't feel strong. I feel alienated. I feel isolated. I feel that things are very surreal, and they're not authentic, and this is all just very overwhelming."

I always had the fear of being separated and abandoned. The sewing is my attempt to keep things together and make things whole.

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.

The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.

If loneliness is the disease, the story is the cure.

Travel, in the superficial sense at least, is a good cure for loneliness. When you travel, especially in the third world, you quickly find that you get more friends than you know what to do with.

Certain events make people come out of their little boxes and become part of the whole.

Certain social situations make me feel like a square peg in a round hole. Realising you can connect to the human race through song makes me feel less alien.

My stories tend to bring people from isolation into community - with at least one other person, usually with a whole community of people - so that they find themselves accepted back by a world that they kind of fled from.

If people looked at me like I was a little different, I would maybe sit next to them, and I would draw.

I guess like any writer or screenwriter I'm alone in my own world so much of the time that I'm often trying to force myself out of my world. Into more risk. A less controlled kind of inspiration. I'm so keenly aware of how easy it's getting to not leave the house, with Amazon, especially.

People often expect the other person to respond first in a positive way, instead of taking the initiative to create that possibility. I feel that's wrong; it can act as a barrier that just promotes a feeling of isolation from others. To overcome feelings of isolation and loneliness, your underlying attitude makes a tremendous difference - approaching others with the thought of compassion in your mind is the best way.

There were a thousand secrets in her eyes, a thousand wounds. A lifetime of distrust and betrayal. Isolation. How did one overcome such things?

Right now we have millions of people in our country who are suffering in isolation, thinking that they are the only ones who are dealing with drug addiction, who don't realize that on their own block there are other people and families. They think they're alone and they think they're going to be judged and they don't want to talk about it. But when people do come forward and share their stories it's incredibly liberating, and it gives other people permission to tell their stories too.

I'm not living in the shadows anymore. I want to walk in the sun. But I can't do that without you.