loneliness

He stopped, feeling lonely in his long speech.

Loneliness, she thought, was craving for other people's company. But she did not know that loneliness can be an unnoticed cramping of the spirit for lack of companionship.

I suppose I'd had, by the standards of that pre-permissive time, a good deal of sex for my age. Girls, or a certain kind of girl, liked me; I had a car-not so common among undergraduates in those days-and I had some money. I wasn't ugly; and even more important, I had my loneliness, which, as every cad knows, is a deadly weapon with women. My 'technique' was to make a show of unpredictability, cynicism, and indifference. Then, like a conjurer with his white rabbit, I produced the solitary heart.

Can I be honest with you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? I mean, really, really, really honest? Sometimes I get sooo scared! I__l wake up in the middle of the night all alone, hundreds of miles away from anybody, and it__ pitch dark, and I have absolutely no idea what__ going to happen to me in the future, and I get so scared I want to scream. Does that happen to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? When it happens, I try to remind myself that I am connected to others__ther things and other people. I work as hard as I can to list their names in my head. On that list, of course, is you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. And the alley, and the well, and the persimmon tree, and that kind of thing. And the wigs that I__e made here with my own hands. And the little bits and pieces I remember about the boy. All these little things (though you__e not just another one of those little things, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, but anyhow_) help me to come back __ere_ little by little.

He__ like a hero come back from thewar, a poor maimed bastard living out the reality of his dreams.Wherever he sits himself the chair collapses; whatever door heenters the room is empty: whatever he puts in his mouth leaves abad taste. Everything is just the same as it was before; theelements are unchanged, the dream is no different than the reality.Only, between the time he went to sleep and the time he woke up,his body was stolen.

I was amazed by the fact that I was not the only writer living, not the only young man "with a locomotive in his chest, and that's a fact," not the only youth with a million hungers and not one of them appeasable, not the only one who is lonely among multitudes, and does not know why.

So remember those who win the gameLose the love they sought to gainIn debitures of quality and dubious integrityTheir small-town eyes will gape at youIn dull surprise when payment dueExceeds accounts received at seventeen

I don__ think that loneliness is necessarily a bad or unconstructive condition. My own skill at jamming time may actually be dependent on some fluid mixture of emotions, among them curiosity, sexual desire, and love, all suspended in a solvent medium of loneliness. I like the heroes or heroines of books I read to be living alone, and feeling lonely, because reading is itself a state of artificially enhanced loneliness. Loneliness makes you consider other people__ lives, makes you more polite to those you deal with in passing, dampens irony and cynicism. The interior of the Fold is, of course, the place of ultimate loneliness, and I like it there. But there are times when the wish for others_ voices, for friendliness returned, reaches unpleasant levels, and becomes a kind of immobilizing pain. That was how it felt as I finished packing up the box of sex machines.

I want to be alone... with someone else who wants to be alone.

My fear of loneliness is like a disease.

they have seen the likes of you before, they may be intrigued by the looks of you, but they know that you-like everyone else-will leave them in the end.

..snow gently settles like dust in a shaft - for one moment there is no one else - only the wind like the hiss of an ice skate ...

I had gotten so used to being alone, but never entirely used to it. Never used to it enough to stop wanting the alternative.

The loneliest days are the ones where you keep company with someone you love who can__ hear you.

When the chips are down, you are alone, and loneliness can be terrifying. Fortunately, I've always had a chum I could call. And I love to be alone. It doesn't bother me one bit. I__ my own company.

You know that saying about how you don__ know what you have until it__ gone? I already did know what I had, and now that she__ gone, I know even more.

And tonight I'm feelin like an astronaut, sending sos from this tiny box,and i lost the signal when i lifted off, now i'm stuck up here and the world forgot, can i please come down? Cuz i'm tired of drifting round and round....can i please come down? Now I lie awake and scream in my zero gravity...and its starting to weigh down on me....lets abort this mission now....CAN I PLEASE COME DOWN? So tonight I'm calling all the astronauts, all the lonely people that the world forgot, if you hear my voice, come pick me up, cuz ur all i've got...

Loneliness, dejection, the contempt or pity of people around you--these are unpleasant feelings. But they are precisely the things that produce genuine Dark Ones.