Listen, Harriet. I do unterstand. I know you don't want either to give or to take ... You don't want ever again to have to depend for happiness on another person.""That's true. That's the truest thing you ever said.""All right. I can respect that. Only you've got to play the game. Don't force an emotional situation and then blame me for it.""But I don't want any situation. I want to be left in peace.

Always remember that you were once alone, and the crowd you see in your life today are just as unecessary as when you were alone.

The sounds of silence are a dim recollection now, like mystery, privacy and paying attention to one thing _ or one person _ at a time.

The goal of privacy is not to protect some stable self from erosion but to create boundaries where this self can emerge, mutate, and stabilize.

I have noticed that the solar radiation reflections from rippled privacy windows cause greatly accelerated growth patterns in plants

So this blessing of loneliness was not really loneliness. Real loneliness was something unendurable. What one wanted when exhausted by the noise and impact of physical bodies was not no people but disembodied people; all those denizens of beloved books who could be taken to one's heart and put away again, in silence, and with no hurt feelings.