Being Alone Quotes
By Alan Reiner – July 16, 2024
‘Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.’ – Paul Tillich
‘Loneliness is my least favorite 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
‘As I get older I’m more and more comfortable being alone.’ – Sienna Miller
‘Solitude is the strength of being alone. It’s where we become our best company.’ – Jay Shetty
‘I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone.’ – Lord Byron
‘What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be.’ – Ellen Burstyn
‘One of the greatest attacks of the enemy is to make you busy, to make you hurried, to make you noisy, to make you distracted, to fill the people of God and the Church of God with so much noise and activity that there is no room for prayer. There is no room for being alone with God. There is no room for silence. There is no room for meditation.’ – Paul Washer
‘Our uniqueness makes us special, makes perception valuable – but it can also make us lonely. This loneliness is different from being ‘alone’: You can be lonely even surrounded by people. The feeling I’m talking about stems from the sense that we can never fully share the truth of who we are. I experienced this acutely at an early age.’ – Amy Tan
‘Being alone with fear can rapidly turn into panic. Being alone with frustration can rapidly turn into anger. Being alone with disappointment can rapid turn into discouragement and, even worse, despair.’ – Mark Goulston
‘The best part about being alone is that you really don’t have to answer to anybody. You do what you want.’ – Justin Timberlake
‘The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.’ – James Baldwin
‘Sometimes, being different feels a lot like being alone. But with that being said, being true to that and being true to my standards and my way of doing things in my art and my music, everything that has made me feel very different… in the end, it has made me the happiest.’ – Lindsey Stirling
‘You could say, in a vulgar Freudian way, that I am the unhappy child who escapes into books. Even as a child, I was most happy being alone. This has not changed.’ – Slavoj Zizek
‘I don’t like being alone.’ – Cristiano Ronaldo
‘It’s an interesting combination: Having a great fear of being alone, and having a desperate need for solitude and the solitary experience. That’s always been a tug of war for me.’ – Jodie Foster
‘Being alone is very difficult.’ – Yoko Ono
‘Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.’ – Alice Koller
‘There’s a tremendous difference between alone and lonely. You could be lonely in a group of people. I like being alone. I like eating by myself. I go home at night and just watch a movie or hang out with my dog. I have to exert myself and really say, oh God, I’ve got to see my friends ’cause I’m too content being by myself.’ – Drew Barrymore
‘I finally faced the fact that it isn’t a crime not having friends. Being alone means you have fewer problems.’ – Whitney Houston
‘I think to be a writer, you have to enjoy being alone. I was a loner as a teenager and was always drawn to characters in books and films who were at the fringes.’ – Markus Zusak
‘One of the major dangers of being alone in February is the tendency to dwell on past relationships. Whether you’re daydreaming about that ‘one that got away,’ or you’re recalling the fairy tale date you went on last Valentine’s Day, romanticizing the past isn’t helpful – nor accurate.’ – Amy Morin
‘I think a large part of being human centers on the state of being alone, and we try to mitigate that in so many ways.’ – Ayobami Adebayo
‘Another thing I like to do is sit back and take in nature. To look at the birds, listen to their singing, go hiking, camping and jogging and running, walking along the beach, playing games and sometimes being alone with the great outdoors. It’s very special to me.’ – Larry Wilcox
‘Freedom of being alone is intoxicating.’ – Kangana Ranaut
‘My favorite hobby is being alone. I like to be alone. I also like dancing, fishing, playing poker sometimes and vegetable gardening – corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, I have a big garden every year.’ – Emanuel Steward
‘The single woman is a free woman, and being single does not mean being alone – it means being free to have a relationship or not. This can be scary, but it’s also very interesting.’ – Monica Bellucci
‘Being alone & actually sitting with our own thoughts can lead to such growth and realizations that are rare in our everyday busy lives.’ – Kourtney Kardashian
‘People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were scared of being alone.’ – Chuck Palahniuk
‘Language… has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.’ – Paul Tillich
‘The Jew does not wish to be isolated. He fears being alone, without allies.’ – Meir Kahane
‘I had a very happy childhood, but I wasn’t that happy a child. I liked being alone and creating characters and voices. I think that’s when your creativity is developed, when you’re young. I liked the world of the imagination because it was an easy place to go to.’ – David Walliams
‘Don’t go away. I don’t want to be alone. I can’t stand being alone.’ – Arnold Rothstein
‘Loneliness is such an omnipotent and painful threat to many persons that they have little conception of the positive values of solitude and even, at times, are frightened at the prospect of being alone.’ – Rollo May
‘Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.’ – John Berger
‘Marvin’s Motivational Moments actually started as something that was actually therapeutic for me. I would sit up late at night after my wife passed trying to adjust to being alone.’ – Marvin Sapp
‘I’m calculating, self-sufficient, reserved, and I enjoy being alone.’ – Melissa Sue Anderson
‘People talk about games and loneliness – it’s a lonely activity. I didn’t understand that. ‘Gears of War’ was the first multiplayer game for me that I enjoyed. But I wasn’t sad. I liked being alone. I liked playing games by myself. I had lots of companionship at the house.’ – Tim Schafer
‘I like being alone and I think this movie, as much as it is an investigation of connection and people bonding, I also think it’s just as much about loneliness.’ – Jason Schwartzman
‘I’ve always had a huge fear of dying or becoming ill. The thing I’m most afraid of, though, is being alone, which I think a lot of performers fear. It’s why we seek the limelight – so we’re not alone, were adored. We’re loved, so people want to be around us. The fear of being alone drives my life.’ – Jennifer Lopez
‘The thought of being alone when time goes on is a little bit scary sometimes, but not really.’ – Celia Hammond
‘People think being alone is a luxury, but it’s crucial: Whatever you’re not down with about yourself gets loud and in your face.’ – Earl Sweatshirt
‘I have an internal protectiveness where it’s like, if it comes to just me, as frightened as I am of losing someone I love or things going sour or simply being alone, there is a dark place in my brain where I’m like, It could happen and I’m okay, I’m prepared.’ – Lena Headey
‘I only work once or twice a year for about a month, so I have a lot of free time. But I’m good at being alone, which helps.’ – Rory Culkin
‘Loneliness is, like, when you wish someone else was there, and solitude is when you enjoy being alone. I don’t always wanna be alone, but I definitely like pockets of solitude to recharge and come back to myself. I think that’s so important for everyone.’ – Jonathan Van Ness
‘Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.’ – Paul Tillich
‘I’m fiercely independent, but I’m also terrified of being alone.’ – Adam Levine
‘I’m learning a lot about myself being alone, and doing what I’m doing.’ – Chantal Kreviazuk
‘I’m quite a loner. I realized that I’m very introverted, and I get energy by being alone instead of being with other people.’ – Candice Patton
‘I have a huge, active imagination, and I think I’m really scared of being alone; because if I’m left to my own devices, I’ll just turn into a madwoman.’ – Claire Danes
‘All men’s misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.’ – Jean de la Bruyere
‘I like the idea of being alone. I like the idea of often being alone in all aspects of my life. I like to feel lonely. I like to need things.’ – Robert Plant
‘Being alone is scarier than any boogey man and the reason why I don’t choose to see Horror movies as a rule.’ – Tom Sizemore
‘Getting through the nights is the toughest part. Being alone. Not having her there to talk to.’ – Stuart Appleby
‘I had a fear of being alone.’ – Gloria Gaynor
‘The most terrifying thing I can think of is being alone – and I mean utterly alone, like no one else in the world alone – at night. That’s the nucleus of the first story in my collection and it’s also where the title came from for the book.’ – Paul Kane
‘I mean one of the things about being alone is that you’ve no people to define yourself off, I mean, people are like all-round mirrors, because let’s face it, we don’t often see ourselves all round in a mirror anyway, do we.’ – Diana Wynne Jones
‘Music should probably provide answers in terms of lyrical content, and giving people a sense of togetherness and oneness, as opposed to being alone in their thoughts and dilemmas or regrets or happiness or whatever.’ – Peabo Bryson
‘And I find – I’m 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn’t diminished any. That’s the necessary part of being a writer, you better like being alone.’ – John Irving
‘Weird people follow you in the streets, you can’t sit alone in a restaurant or a cafe and read a book in peace, and I think everybody values those moments of being alone.’ – Winona Ryder
‘I’m so accustomed to being alone.’ – Leighton Meester
‘I’m fascinated with myself and love hearing the sound of my own voice. I’d like to hear what I have to say. A lot of people don’t like being alone because they truly don’t like themselves, but I love me.’ – Gene Simmons
‘I absolutely relate to being alone in squalor, trying to come up with something adequate. I relate to that, and I’ve been known to crawl out of bed and drink out of a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke.’ – Diablo Cody
‘I actually like being alone. I spend most evenings reading and taking long baths.’ – Shonda Rhimes
‘I’ve always had better luck learning things on my own. And I really love the challenge of doing it yourself and kind of being alone against the system.’ – Oren Peli
‘I’m the most communal person that exists and a very solitary person. So I think writing is a form of getting to the community and being alone, and it’s the best of both possible worlds.’ – Ariel Dorfman
‘For me, books have always been a way to feel less alone while being alone. Perhaps if I was depressed and isolated, just communicating with these authors through their sentences helped me.’ – Jonathan Ames
‘I think growing up on a farm in a certain amount of isolation, with not a lot of friends nearby, makes you entertain yourself and kind of grows your imagination – being alone is quite good for all that. You make up stories, talk to the animals, let them be an audience, a bunch of cows.’ – Kristen Schaal
‘Music was like my first real toy. I was an only child for a while, and I was alone a lot of the time – and I liked it. I still like being alone.’ – Jeff Buckley
‘Experiencing those moments of being alone… is a very, very weird flooring and exposing position to be in when you’re just not used to it… But I’ve never been lonely. And with my kids Mia and Joe that remains the case.’ – Kate Winslet
‘I remember being alone a lot as a child, and I still love to be alone.’ – Cindy Williams
‘I am not the most courageous guy in the world outside of the court. Being alone in the dark is something I don’t like.’ – Rafael Nadal
‘I like to go dancing, have a few beers. I like being alone, too. I have days where it’s ‘God, get me a shot of tequila.” – Justine Bateman
‘Some people can’t stand being alone. I love solitude and silence. But when I come out of it, I’m a regular talking machine. It’s all or nothing for me.’ – Celine Dion
‘I hate being alone, even for 10 minutes.’ – Clare Balding
‘As an actor, I’m attracted to drama; as a director, it’s humor – because it’s the story of my life, and I can’t be that serious about it. Being alone is a big theme in all my movies, both as a director and as an actress.’ – Jodie Foster
‘I’m not writing non-fiction. I don’t feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination.’ – John Irving
‘Is being single hard? It depends where your mind is. If you are focused, being single is an enjoyable experience, but if you hate being alone, you’ll hate being single. I think it depends on the individual are where they are in life.’ – Lauren London
‘As a child, I was a brat, and my parents didn’t know how to control me. So they told me ghost stories, which stayed with me. I am still petrified of darkness and being alone.’ – Bipasha Basu
‘Being alone on the moors is scary; as the rain clouds settle in, it makes you realise your place in nature.’ – Dave Davies
‘I never felt isolated; I just liked being alone. I think that some people are good at being alone, and some people aren’t, and as a child, I really liked it.’ – Karin Slaughter
‘In a household tragedy, you are very much aware of being alone. It is something that is possible to grasp, and that is why it hurts so much. Because you are alone. I know a little about this.’ – Per Petterson
‘When I write, I lose time. I’m happy in a way that I have a hard time finding in real life. The intimacy between my brain and my fingers and my computer… Yet knowing that that intimacy will find an audience… It’s very satisfying. It’s like having the safety of being alone with the ego reward of being known.’ – Jill Soloway
‘Now that I’m older, I have a much better appreciation of nature, and I love being alone.’ – Gia Coppola
‘I’m into horror pictures because I love the fear of being alone in the dark, and I’d recommend that to any composer who wants to work in this genre.’ – Christopher Young
‘I wrote in coffee shops in Japan when I was 22, 23, before I had the stamina to sit down and write. I liked the buzzy environment; I couldn’t speak Japanese when I arrived, so it was kind of a white noise. It felt more sociable than being alone, but now, as I’ve developed a writing practice, I couldn’t do it.’ – Susan Barker
‘I was an only child with a lot of time to kill. I suspect a lot of writers are only children, or only children become writers because it’s a way of being alone.’ – Christopher Buckley
‘Besides individual things like thunder and gunshots, what dogs fear most is not belonging, being alone.’ – Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
‘What I am afraid of is the first thing I was ever aware of being afraid of and what I have told my daughter countless times she need not fear: being alone in the dark. It is a small prison of emotion from which there is no escape. It is also, in its own way, a shattering revelation.’ – S. C. Gwynne
‘I got married for the wrong reasons. I was tired of being alone. I have to own that. It was me, not her.’ – Steve Harvey
‘It takes people being alone in front of the computer at three in the morning to write opinions about movies, apparently.’ – Jeff Nichols
‘Adolescents show off. That’s another way of wanting to connect with people. It’s not an aspect of human behavior that we generally consider to be very admirable, but it is, in some way, a means of connecting with someone else and not being alone.’ – Kenneth Lonergan
‘Growing up in Georgia in the southeastern United States, I was always reading and always kept to myself. I never felt isolated, though; I just liked being alone.’ – Karin Slaughter
‘I think some people are good at being alone, and some people aren’t, and as a child, I really liked it.’ – Karin Slaughter
‘I ended up losing weight and going through a lot of stuff, but yeah, that is so much of my life and my past. I’m glad that I went through that because I don’t think I would be where I am now if I hadn’t gone through it. It spills over in most of my love for movies and being alone.’ – Josh Trank
‘I have run from a lot of relationships in favor of being alone. And I tend to find men who use their money and status as a dating tool to be unattractive.’ – Erin Foster
‘I played a lot of dress-up in my room. I really liked being alone. I had a lot of friends, but I had an only-child, live-in-my-head personality.’ – Ari Graynor
‘The thought of being on my own really terrified me. But then I realized being alone is really a cleansing thing.’ – Lindsey Buckingham
‘To film with our family is awesome – you have to hang out with each other, and I love that because I hate being alone.’ – Nikki Bella
‘I do say all I’ve ever written about is being alone. And most people take that as, ‘Oh, that’s so sad.’ And I always say, ‘No. No, all I ever write about is being alone, and sometimes that’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.” – Shonda Rhimes
‘I love playing music with people, but I also just love the art and meditation of being alone and working on stuff.’ – Jim James
‘I love being on the road with others, with a camera, but also being alone writing poetry.’ – Tony Harrison
‘I understand being alone. I understand not liking it, wishing for something else.’ – Richard Jenkins
‘Writing and producing television very much speaks to the extroverted part of my personality. I love collaboration, the joint effort of hundreds of people working together to create something. But the other part of who I am is extremely introverted. I love being alone and dreaming up ideas and writing novels.’ – Blake Crouch
‘I’m open, and I’m out there, but I also enjoy being alone, relaxing.’ – Jazz Jennings
‘For me, it’s always been draining to be around people for too long because I’m naturally a pretty expressionless person. From an early age, I found being alone incredibly liberating.’ – Kevin Parker
‘I just always felt whole when I was writing. I felt this kind of beautiful privacy that I never felt in any other way. I feel like there’s this great fullness to being alone, and writing is a really vivid way and a really magical way of being alone.’ – Sheila Heti
‘As a kid growing up, I really hated being alone. I was always that kid that was like, ‘Do you want to hang out? Let’s go to the mall. Let’s go to the movies. Let’s go to the park.’ I would call people and call people and call people. If I was alone when I wasn’t at school, then there was something wrong.’ – Jonathan Van Ness
‘We can all understand that feeling of being alone in the world trying to find ways to not be alone.’ – Andrew Haigh
‘I was a shy little girl. Growing up, I was often content being alone in my room, making up stories, and acting out all the parts. I became so good at it that, with the door closed, my parents thought I had friends over.’ – Susan Lucci
‘I am not afraid of being alone and single.’ – LeToya Luckett
‘I don’t like being alone, so I want to share these experiences and things with as many people as possible, so that is why I choose to go to the Moon with artists!’ – Yusaku Maezawa
‘I hate being alone. That’s why I like being with my friends: we’ve got energy; we’re social as hell.’ – Lil Yachty
‘Before I knew it, I was singing, ‘I’m so tired of being alone,’ and that’s Al right there. From then, my attitude was, ‘Let Otis be Otis and James be James. I’m not going to emulate them anymore.” – Al Green
‘I don’t know if this is because I’m a bit too old, but it is true that I’m getting insensible about romance recently. I’m very used to being alone now, and I don’t think that’s not half bad.’ – Gong Yoo
‘It’s really hard to do this life – to be a human being alone.’ – Benji Madden
‘That’s what my music is good for – clearing out the house and being alone.’ – Mike Patton
‘People are full of great advice… Professors, parents, friends mean well… But in the end, the person driving this thing called life is you. Listen to you. Spend time being alone. Learn your worth. Dream. And never forget where you came from.’ – Brooke Baldwin
‘I’m an only child, and I don’t mind being alone.’ – Bianca Andreescu
‘I like being alone. I need a lot of alone time as a human. And especially on a movie set when you’re around people all day long.’ – Rooney Mara
‘I think a lot of people are worried about being alone. I completely understand that. I really do. Being alone is terrifying, especially when you’ve lost people.’ – Zelda Williams
‘My first experience out of my country was Ecuador. That was a very good option for me. To know how you can develop your coaching style or your personality being away and being alone, that is not easy.’ – Manuel Pellegrini
‘We behave as if being alone were a problem.’ – Peter Handke
‘I love being alone.’ – Olly Alexander
‘I’ve never been worried about being alone and there is no pressure to get married, although I would love to do it one day with the right girl.’ – Adriano Zumbo
‘When I’m bored, I hate being alone so there’s always a friend at my place.’ – Akhil Akkineni
‘I think rather than being unhappy with somebody, being alone and happy is better.’ – Jasmin Bhasin
‘Single people make me crazy with their whining about being alone.’ – Jason Nash
‘After all these years, being alone, creating your art and finding your way, finding the path I wanted to take, writing the songs, being more comfortable and confident in what I do, it’s been actually an incredible joyride.’ – Tarja Turunen
‘Sure, there are times when I’d like to have someone romantically in my life, but then I think about my life as a whole and realize I’m generally happy being alone.’ – Andi Dorfman
‘It was tough being alone and not having parents around when I was going through high school in terms of staying disciplined, but I adjusted, and stayed focused.’ – Rory MacDonald
‘Being alone on stage without a character to hide behind has always terrified me but I’ve always been one for facing my fears.’ – Carrie Hope Fletcher
‘Travelling alone gave me time and space, free of the pressures of trying to verbalise experiences, so I could simply feel the joy of my own existence. This was an extremely powerful realisation: I didn’t just find strength and solace in being alone, but I learned to love it.’ – Vick Hope
‘Tennis spoke to me. I liked being alone on the court. I liked the idea of all the mistakes being on me.’ – Coco Gauff