We live, not as we wish to, but as we can. Menander, 342-c.292 B.C.
I’ve been too busy to be lonely. John Paul Getty, interview BBC 1963
I always felt a sense of cosmic companionship so that the loneliness and the fear have faded away because of a greater feeling of security because of commitment to a moral idea. Martin Luther King, interview BBC 1961
People like Sheba think they know what it is to be lonely. But of the drip, drip of the long-haul no-end-in-sight solitude. They know nothing. What it’s like to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the launderette. Or to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor’s hand sends a jilt of longing straight to your groin. Zoe Heller, Notes on a Scandal, 2003; viz also film
The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely. Charlotte Brontë
I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others – young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life. F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Oh God, I’ve never felt so lonely in all my life. We’ve two chairs. And our little coffee table. Poor Cow 1967 starring Carol White & Terence Stamp & John Bindon & Queenie Watts & Kate Williams & Laurie Asprey & James Beckett & Ray Barron & Hilda Barry & Kenneth Campbell & Ron Clarke et al, director Ken Loach
The very fine line between loneliness and solitude, reflection; being alone always appealed to me when I was a kid. Brad Mehldau
The city can be lonely too. On Dangerous Ground 1951 starring Robert Ryan & Ida Lupino & Ward Bond & Charles Kemper & Anthony Ross & Ed Begley & Ian Wolfe & Sumner Williams & Gus Schilling et al, director Nicholas Ray, her to him
The trouble is not really in being alone, it’s being lonely. One can be lonely in the midst of a crowd, don’t you think? Christine Feehan, Dark Prince