Woody Allen - George Santayana - Ingmar Bergman - Charlton Heston - Vincent: The Untold Story of Our Uncle TV - Mark Rothko - Tim Marlow TV - Tracey Emin - Alfred Lord Tennyson - Outside the Wall 1950 - Red Dwarf TV - Ford Madox Ford - Richard Nixon - Gerald Early - Mark Twain - Anton Chekhov - Jonathan Miller & Colin McGinn TV - Kurt Vonnegut - Sylvia Plath - Bjork - Raymond Williams - Anne Hathaway - Jean-Paul Sartre - Amish: Out of Order TV - Roy Orbison & Joe Melsom - Alan Sillitoe - John Lennon & Paul McCartney - Taxi Driver 1976 - Menander - John Paul Getty - Martin Luther King - Zoe Heller - Charlotte Bronte - F Scott Fitzgerald - Poor Cow 1967 - Brad Mehldau - On Dangerous Ground 1951 - Christine Feehan -
Life is full of misery, loneliness and suffering – it’s all over much too soon. Woody Allen
The loneliest woman in the world is a woman without a close woman friend. George Santayana
Today the individual has become the highest form, and the greatest bane, of artistic creation. The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other’s eyes and yet deny each other’s existence. We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster’s whim and the purest ideal. Ingmar Bergman
The Internet is for lonely people. People should live. Charlton Heston
The constant loneliness which had plagued Vincent all his life. Vincent – The Untold Story of Our Uncle II, caption, 2012
When I was a younger man, art was a lonely thing. No galleries, no collectors, no critics, no money. Yet, it was a golden age, for we all had nothing to lose and a vision to gain. Today it is not quite the same. It is a time of tons of verbiage, activity, consumption. Which condition is better for the world at large I shall not venture to discuss. But I do know that many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow. We must all hope we find them. Mark Rothko
The scene that Seurat depicts is a view across the Seine ... It’s a painting that subtly but I think emphatically wrestles with the idea of modern life ... The loneliness of the human condition. Tim Marlow at the Courtauld 3/3, 2010
Isolation would become a central characteristic in his art. Tim Marlow on ... Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye
Weeping Nude 1905: a series that’s masterful in the way that it wrestles with the fundamental loneliness of the human condition. ibid.
My loneliness is more intense. Tracey Emin
All that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring. Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘Milton: Alcaics’, 1863
You look so lonesome; so am I. Outside the Wall 1950 starring Richard Basehart & Marilyn Maxwell & Signe Hasso & Dorothy Hart & Joseph Pevney & Lloyd Gough & Harry Morgan & John Hoyt et al, director Crane Wilbur, nurse
Loneliness weighs heavy on us all. Personally, the only thing that keeps me going is the thought that we are over sixty billion miles away from the nearest Berni Inn. Red Dwarf s2e2: Better Than Life, computer intro, BBC 1988
Our greatest enemy is going space-crazy through loneliness. The only thing that helps me maintain my slender grip on reality is the friendship I share with my collection of singing potatoes. Red Dwarf s2e5: Queeg, Holly
We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist. So, for a time, if such a passion come to fruition, the man will get what he wants. He will get the moral support, the encouragement, the relief from the sense of loneliness, the assurance of his own worth. But these things pass away; inevitably they pass away as the shadows pass across sundials. It is sad, but it is so. The pages of the book will become familiar; the beautiful corner of the road will have been turned too many times. Well, this is the saddest story. Ford Madox Ford
The more you stay in this kind of job, the more you realize that a public figure, a major public figure, is a lonely man. Richard Nixon
It was kind of a piercing kind of a sound. It was piercing and mellow at the same time. And I think that’s what really struck me about just the loneliness of the human condition. And for some reason I rather thought that black people actually captured that rather very well in music was this kind of loneliness in the human condition, that no matter how much you yearn for communion, yearn for community, in the end there is this loneliness and there’s no way you can escape it. Gerald Early
Be good and you will be lonesome. Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about. (Anton Chekhov
Somehow lonely is our essence. Jonathan Miller, The Atheism Tapes, Colin McGinn
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured. Kurt Vonnegut
God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of ‘parties’ with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter – they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship – but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering. Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
I never really understood the word ‘loneliness’. As far as I was concerned, I was in an orgy with the sky and the ocean, and with nature. Björk
From the late eighteenth century onwards, it is no longer from the practice of community but from being a wanderer that the instinct of fellow-feeling is derived. Thus an essential isolation and silence and loneliness become the carriers of nature and community against the rigours, the cold abstinence, the selfish ease of ordinary society. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City
Loneliness is my least favourite thing about life. The thing that I’m most worried about is just being alone without anybody to care for or someone who will care for me. Anne Hathaway
If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company. Jean-Paul Sartre
There’s nothing more lonely than leaving the Amish. Amish: Out of Order IV: Mending Fences, Mose, National Geographic 2012
Only the Lonely. Roy Orbison & Joe Melsom, song 1960
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Alan Sillitoe, novel 1959
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,
Lives in a dream.
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door,
Who is it for?
All the lonely people, where do they all come from? John Lennon & Paul McCartney, 1966
Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There’s no escape. I’m God’s lonely man. Taxi Driver 1976 starring Robert de Niro & Jodie Foster & Harvey Keitel & Cybill Shepherd & Albert Brooks & Leonard Harris & Peter Boyle & Harry Northup et al, director Martin Scorsese