Arthur C Clarke - Orson Welles - James Joyce - Martin Luther - Thomas Wolfe - Joseph Conrad - Samuel Beckett & Waiting For Godot - Arthur Schopenhauer - Jodi Picoult - Stephen Fry - William Nicholson - Betty Smith - Thomas Hardy - Blaise Pascal - Lucian Freud - Mary Cassatt - Tracey Emin - Jasper Johns - Kip Kinkel - A Prayer For the Dying 1987 - The Good The Bad & The Ugly 1966 - Star Trek: Voyager TV - Star Trek: Discovery TV - Henry Kissinger - Charles Bukowski - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Voltaire - Colin McGinn - The Borgias TV - Hermann Hesse - Jean Rostand - Grand Hotel 1932 & Greta Garbo - D H Lawrence - John Milton - Alice DJ - William Shakespeare - John Keats - Emily Carr - Joel Chandler Harris - Molly Haskell - Oscar Hammerstein - Anne Hathaway - Marilyn Monroe - George Washington - Chanakya - Henry David Thoreau - Jean-Paul Sartre - Audrey Hepburn - Charlie Chaplin - Henrik Ibsen - Paul Newman - Gertrude Stein - Virginia Woolf - Anthony Burgess - Lord Byron - Christine Feehan - Henrik Ibsen - The Secret Tapes of O J Simpson TV - Emily Bronte - Jim Brady – The Detonator 2006 - Virginia Woolf - William Makepeace Thackeray - Adam Curtis TV - Brian Cox TV - Brad Mehldau -
Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying. Arthur C Clarke
We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone. Orson Welles
He was alone. He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone. Martin Luther
Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? Thomas Wolfe, foreword to ‘Look Homeward, Angel’, 1929
We live as we dream – alone. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
I sometimes wonder if we wouldn’t be better off alone. Samuel Beckett, Waiting For Godot starring Stephen Brennan & Barry McGovern & Johnny Murphy & Sam McGovern et al, director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Estragon to Vladimir
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free. Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms
We are alone with no excuses. That is the idea I shall try to convey when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself; yet, in other respects, if free, because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. Jean-Paul Sartre
Our culture promotes individuality, while the Amish are deeply entrenched in community. To us, if someone stands out, it’s no big deal because diversity is respected and expected. To the Amish, there’s no room for deviation from the norm. It’s important to fit in, because that similarity of identity is what defines the society. If you don’t fit in, the consequences are psychological tragic, you stand alone when all you’ve ever known is being part of the group. Jodi Picoult, Plain Truth
You are who you are when nobody’s watching. Stephen Fry
We read to know that we are not alone. William Nicholson
From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived. Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
You did not walk with me
Of late to the hill-top tree
By the gated ways,
As in earlier days;
You were weak and lame,
So you never came,
And I went alone, and I did not mind,
Not thinking of you as left behind.
I walked up there today
Just in the former way;
Surveyed around
The familiar ground
By myself again:
What difference then?
Only that underlying sense
Of the look of a room on returning thence. Thomas Hardy, The Walk
We shall die alone. Blaise Pascal, Pensees, 1670
All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone. Blaise Pascal
I always like being on my own. Lucian Freud
My school reports used to say, ‘takes no part in communal activities’, so I thought at least I’m getting something right. Lucian Freud
I am independent! I can live alone and I love to work. Mary Cassatt
When I think about sex it makes me realise how alone I feel. Tracey Emin, BBC 2005
Every artist feels alone and isolated, Friends are very important in terms of all sorts of definitions of oneself. They tell you what you are and what they are aside from the intellectual aspects. Jasper Johns
Here all alone. I am always alone. I don’t no [sic] who I am. I want to be something I can never be. I try so hard every day. But in the end I hate myself for what I’ve become. Kip Kinkel, journal entry
We are fundamentally alone. A Prayer for the Dying 1987 starring Bob Hoskins & Mickey Rourke & Liam Neeson & Alan Bates & Sammi Davis & Christopher Fulford & Leonard Termo & Camille Coduri & Maurice O'Connell et al, director Mike Hodges
You’re really lucky to have me so close when it happened. Think if you’d been on your own. Look I mean when one is ill it is good to have somebody close by, friends or relations. Do you have parents, Blondie? A mother? Not even a mother. No-one? You’re all alone, eh. Like me, Blondie. We’re all alone in the world. I have you, you have me. The Good, The Bad & The Ugly [Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo] 1966 starring Clint Eastwood & Lee van Cleef & Eli Wallach & Aldo Giuffre & Al Mulock & Antonio Casas & John Bartha & Claudio Scarchillio & Sandro Scarchilli & Antonio Molion Rojo, director Sergio Leone, Tuco at Blondie’s bedside
You are all alone. Star Trek: Voyager s1e5: Phage, Doctor to Neelix
We cannot signal for help; we are alone. Star Trek: Voyager: Scorpion II s4e1, Seven of Nine to Chakotay & Tuvok
This drone is small now. Alone. One voice. One mind. The silence is unacceptable. Star Trek: Voyager s4e2: The Gift, Seven of Nine to Janeway
To any vessels within range I hope this message reaches you. I am a HD25 isomorphic projection. There has been an accident. My crew is dead. I am alone. Please help me. Star Trek: Voyager: Revulsion s4e5
I am an individual. I will survive alone. Star Trek: Voyager: One s4e25, Seven of Nine to imaginary Borg
I am Seven of Nine. I am alone but I will adapt. ibid. Seven of Nine to self
We will be alone. We will not have back-up. There’s just us. Star Trek: Discovery s1e4: The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not for the Lamb’s Cry, Captain Lorca
I’ve always acted alone. Americans like that immensely ... This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely because to be alone has always been part of my style or, if you like, my technique. Henry Kissinger, interview November 1972