Loneliness Quotes

‘Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.’ – May Sarton

‘Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.’ – Henry Rollins

‘Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.’ – Maya Angelou

‘Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.’ – C. S. Lewis

‘Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.’ – Mother Teresa

‘Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.’ – Paul Tillich

‘Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.’ – Woody Allen

‘To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be.’ – Anna Louise Strong

‘We are living in dystopia, in a world that is dominated by technology and disconnect, alienation, loneliness, and dysfunction.’ – Steven Wilson

‘Too much self-centered attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering.’ – Dalai Lama

‘At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self.’ – Brendan Behan

‘Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.’ – Dag Hammarskjold

‘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

‘We are all born alone and die alone. The loneliness is definitely part of the journey of life.’ – Jenova Chen

‘It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony.’ – Benjamin Britten

‘Solitude is pleasant. Loneliness is not.’ – Anna Neagle

‘The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.’ – Norman Cousins

‘The surest sign of age is loneliness.’ – Annie Dillard

‘Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness.’ – Pedro Almodovar

‘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

‘Loneliness is proof that your innate search for connection is intact.’ – Martha Beck

‘Negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and guilt have an important role to play in a happy life; they’re big, flashing signs that something needs to change.’ – Gretchen Rubin

‘My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication – it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness – it is all that I have – and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.’ – Franz Kafka

‘Leadership is the other side of the coin of loneliness, and he who is a leader must always act alone. And acting alone, accept everything alone.’ – Ferdinand Marcos

‘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

‘Everybody has something that chews them up and, for me, that thing was always loneliness. The cinema has the power to make you not feel lonely, even when you are.’ – Tom Hanks

‘Solitude is not the same as loneliness. Solitude is a solitary boat floating in a sea of possible companions.’ – Robert Fulghum

‘Who knows what true loneliness is – not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.’ – Joseph Conrad

‘Loneliness is different than isolation and solitude. Loneliness is a subjective feeling where the connections we need are greater than the connections we have. In the gap, we experience loneliness. It’s distinct from the objective state of isolation, which is determined by the number of people around you.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.’ – Taylor Swift

‘I don’t fear death so much as I fear its prologues: loneliness, decrepitude, pain, debilitation, depression, senility. After a few years of those, I imagine death presents like a holiday at the beach.’ – Mary Roach

‘Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.’ – Bertrand Russell

‘What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?’ – George Eliot

‘We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.’ – Albert Schweitzer

‘Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.’ – Thomas Merton

‘There were times when I had great times with my brothers, pillow fights and things, but I was, used to always cry from loneliness.’ – Michael Jackson

‘Maybe true love isn’t out there for me, but I can sublimate my loneliness with the notion that true love is out there for someone.’ – Roxane Gay

‘I’ve also seen that great men are often lonely. This is understandable, because they have built such high standards for themselves that they often feel alone. But that same loneliness is part of their ability to create.’ – Yousuf Karsh

‘You may not enjoy loneliness, because loneliness is sad. But solitude is something else; solitude is what you look forward to when you want to be alone, when you want to be with yourself. So, solitude is something we all need from time to time.’ – Ruskin Bond

‘While loneliness has the potential to kill, connection has even more potential to heal.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘Loneliness comes with life.’ – Whitney Houston

‘An artist is always alone – if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.’ – Henry Miller

‘Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man.’ – Thomas Wolfe

‘A blank wall of social and professional antagonism faces the woman physician that forms a situation of singular and painful loneliness, leaving her without support, respect or professional counsel.’ – Elizabeth Blackwell

‘The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.’ – Tom Wolfe

‘What I do remember about first grade and that year was that it was very lonely. I didn’t have any friends, and I wasn’t allowed to go to the cafeteria or play on the playground. What bothered me most was the loneliness in school every day.’ – Ruby Bridges

‘Times may have changed, but there are some things that are always with us – loneliness is one of them.’ – Laurie Graham

‘Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness, except greed.’ – Thomas Harris

‘If you go deeper and deeper into your own heart, you’ll be living in a world with less fear, isolation and loneliness.’ – Sharon Salzberg

‘The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.’ – Henry Kissinger

‘Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.’ – Lawrence Durrell

‘Man’s loneliness is but his fear of life.’ – Eugene O’Neill

‘If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.’ – Anton Chekhov

‘Loneliness is the ultimate poverty.’ – Pauline Phillips

‘What is man without the beasts? For if all the beast were gone, man would die of a great loneliness of the spirit.’ – Chief Seattle

‘Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate.’ – Germaine Greer

‘Anger is a manifestation of a deeper issue… and that, for me, is based on insecurity, self-esteem and loneliness.’ – Naomi Campbell

‘I believe that dialogue is the key to breaking through our tendency to separate and isolate. Dialogue changes isolation and loneliness into connection and interdependence. This, I believe, is the essence of Buddhism.’ – Vinessa Shaw

‘Fame always brings loneliness. Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole.’ – Vicki Baum

‘The concept of loneliness and exile and self-sufficiency continually bucks me up.’ – Christopher Hitchens

‘We live in a society bloated with data yet starved for wisdom. We’re connected 24/7, yet anxiety, fear, depression and loneliness is at an all-time high. We must course-correct.’ – Elizabeth Kapu’uwailani Lindsey

‘I realize that I live on the bubble of insanity. I feel the weight of human suffering, loneliness and despair on me all the time. It’s not getting easier; if anything, it’s always right on the edge of my skin.’ – Erwin McManus

‘The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it.’ – John Huston

‘We have all known the long loneliness, and we have found that the answer is community.’ – Dorothy Day

‘Feelings of loss and loneliness are inevitable when much of what makes life worth living is taken away.’ – Wes Streeting

‘Social acceptance, ‘being liked,’ has so much power because it holds the feelings of loneliness at bay.’ – Rollo May

‘In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.’ – John Steinbeck

‘The sky is one whole, the water another; and between those two infinities the soul of man is in loneliness.’ – Henryk Sienkiewicz

‘I said it’s a cold universe and I don’t mean that metaphorically. If you go out into space, it’s cold. It’s really cold and we don’t know what’s up there. We happen to be in this little pocket where there’s a sun. What have we got except love and each other to guard against all that isolation and loneliness?’ – David Chase

‘I sought my father in the world of the black musician, because it contained wisdom, experience, sadness and loneliness. I was not ever interested in the music of boys. From my youngest years, I was interested in the music of men.’ – Eric Clapton

‘Part of the reason people don’t talk about their loneliness is that they feel they will be judged for it.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘While we yearn for peace, we live in a world burdened with hunger, pain, anguish, loneliness, sickness, and sorrow.’ – Joseph B. Wirthlin

‘There’s a difference between solitude and loneliness. I can understand the concept of being a monk for a while.’ – Tom Hanks

‘The principal contributor to loneliness in this country is television. What happens is that the family ‘gets together’ alone.’ – Ashley Montagu

‘My books are always about somebody who is taken from aloneness and isolation – often elevated loneliness – to community. It may be a denigrated community that is filthy and poor, but they are not alone; they are with people.’ – Chuck Palahniuk

‘Hollywood is loneliness beside the swimming pool.’ – Liv Ullmann

‘Unlike many other illnesses, what I find profoundly empowering about addressing loneliness is that the ultimate solution to loneliness lies in each of us. We can be the medicine that each other needs. We can be the solution other people crave. We are all doctors and we are all healers.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘Fame doesn’t end loneliness.’ – Claire Danes

‘I relieved my loneliness with movies and books, and I had a strong desire to express what I felt through acting.’ – HoYeon Jung

‘Yoga is a way to freedom. By its constant practice, we can free ourselves from fear, anguish and loneliness.’ – Indra Devi

‘Poverty is clearly one source of emotional suffering, but there are others, like loneliness. A policy to reduce the loneliness of the elderly would certainly reduce suffering.’ – Daniel Kahneman

‘Aside from doing everything possible to provide programs for people who are seriously ill, I want to do everything humanly possible to help create a more caring society so that we can begin to counter the painful loneliness and sense of helplessness which has engulfed too many of our people.’ – Rosalynn Carter

‘I remember learning as a kid that love meant loneliness and confusion.’ – Calum Scott

‘Loneliness is always there, it’s a phase that comes and goes and it is a very difficult phase.’ – Neena Gupta

‘It would be impossible to estimate how much time and energy we invest in trying to fix, change and deny our emotions – especially the ones that shake us at our very core, like hurt, jealousy, loneliness, shame, rage and grief.’ – Debbie Ford

‘Forget sex or politics or religion, loneliness is the subject that clears out a room.’ – Douglas Coupland

”Intimate Apparel’ is a lyrical meditation on one woman’s loneliness and desire. ‘Fabulation’ is a very fast-paced play of the MTV generation.’ – Lynn Nottage

‘I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen.’ – Carson McCullers

‘Loneliness is about the scariest thing out there.’ – Joss Whedon

‘Misanthropy is born, I think, out of an almost oppressive sense of loneliness, a conviction that there’s no one on earth who understands you. I don’t think misanthropes hate people: They hate that people hate them.’ – Hanya Yanagihara

‘I never really had any close friends in India, and I felt a terrible loneliness and isolation for many years. Westernized Indians don’t like my books and I tend not to like westernized Indians – so we’re quits.’ – Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

‘There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.’ – Eric Hoffer

‘It’s clear to me that anyone, anywhere, can experience loneliness, isolation, solitude, and estrangement; and most people probably do encounter these things at some point in their lives.’ – Brendan Myers

‘The dominant feeling of the battlefield is loneliness.’ – William Slim

‘People drain me, even the closest of friends, and I find loneliness to be the best state in the union to live in.’ – Margaret Cho

‘The sinner who suddenly realizes God’s love for him and then looks at his rejection of that love feels a loss similar to the death of a loved one. A deep void is created in the soul and a loneliness akin to the agony of death.’ – Mother Angelica

‘Friendship needs no words – it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.’ – Dag Hammarskjold

‘While the resurrection promises us a new and perfect life in the future, God loves us too much to leave us alone to contend with the pain, guilt and loneliness of our present life.’ – Josh McDowell

‘The movies were so healing for me because I had such an isolated, lonely childhood. Going to the movies and having the lights go down, you disappear. If you have esteem issues, suddenly you’re in a void where nobody can see you. You are just by yourself in that darkness, and your loneliness is cured.’ – Michael De Luca

‘What’s worse – loneliness or a relationship that inevitably leads to costly therapy sessions?’ – Ana Kasparian

‘The only place I’ve felt was really my home is my cabin up north. There’s something in the water there that connects me to that place. There’s also this sense of isolation and loneliness about it that I’ve never been able to shake.’ – Jessica Lange

‘With Charlie Brown, it was about loneliness and isolation. I always thought that the thing about Charlie Brown and those characters was the absence of the parents. Half the strip was about who wasn’t there. The parents were never in the picture.’ – Matt Groening

‘Some days, 24 hours is too much to stay put in, so I take the day hour by hour, moment by moment. I break the task, the challenge, the fear into small, bite-size pieces. I can handle a piece of fear, depression, anger, pain, sadness, loneliness, illness. I actually put my hands up to my face, one next to each eye, like blinders on a horse.’ – Regina Brett

‘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

‘Hostility comes from loneliness, from not seeing yourself like a drop falling into the ocean of humanity like everyone else.’ – Mehmet Oz

‘Moon! Moon! I am prone before you. Pity me, and drench me in loneliness.’ – Amy Lowell

‘The loneliest ebb of my life came on that Christmas eve, only one day after my arrival in New York. The abyss of loneliness. I ate a solitary dinner in a small cafe, and the very food tasted bitter with my unshed tears. One doesn’t dare cry in America. It is unmanly here.’ – Rudolph Valentino

‘Myself, I suffer from loneliness. And I think we all feel alone. I’m looking for stories that help people deal with loneliness and help them if they are monsters: they don’t have to undertake monstrous actions. And maybe they’re not monsters.’ – David Harbour

‘We can experience an erosion of self-esteem when we’re lonely, as we come to believe that it’s because we’re not likable or because something is broken inside of us. And that can just compound that loneliness further and further.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement, and death will be part of your journey, but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors. No evil can resist grace forever.’ – Brennan Manning

‘It would do the world good if every man would compel himself occasionally to be absolutely alone. Most of the world s progress has come out of such loneliness.’ – Bruce Barton

‘The life of an athlete does have to be lonely and you have to be focused on your craft and what you do. Loneliness is just a sacrifice you make as an Olympic-level athlete.’ – Johnny Weir

‘I wanted Jesus in ‘A.D.’ to be very, very, very human – to have those qualities of vulnerability and doubt and pain and sadness and loneliness. Once the resurrection happens and we see that Jesus has risen, it’s almost complete, right? It’s all about the joy and the smile and the happiness and the closeness to the disciples.’ – Juan Pablo Di Pace

‘Writing is an antidote for loneliness.’ – Steven Berkoff

‘In their heyday, the Pet Shop Boys were the Interpol of the Eighties, dressing up to sing really weird pop songs about lust and loneliness in the big city. They’re low-pro now, not retro-worshipped in the manner of Depeche Mode, New Order, or The Cure, but you can hear the reason why – these guys are too sad.’ – Rob Sheffield

‘In the past I have never thought about loneliness when working, and I don’t think about it now. Yet there must be a reason for the fact that so many people talk about it.’ – Alberto Giacometti

‘We can all fight against loneliness by engaging in random acts of kindness.’ – Gail Honeyman

‘In the short term if I feel loneliness, it’s like any other biological signals. It’s like hunger or thirst. It’s alerting me that something that’s critical for my survival is missing.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘Keep in mind that to avoid loneliness, many people need both a social circle and an intimate attachment. Having just one of two may still leave you feeling lonely.’ – Gretchen Rubin

‘Be mobile at all times, even if it causes you suffering or feelings of loneliness. Unless you’re willing to do that, you’re never going to get the bigger rewards.’ – Oleg Cassini

‘The interesting thing is why we’re so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.’ – David Foster Wallace

‘I really appreciate what it takes to create a book. I understand the loneliness that it involves and the excitement and the vulnerability: I especially identify with that.’ – Bill Clegg

‘There’s a difference between solitude and loneliness.’ – Maggie Smith

‘I embraced loneliness as a kid. I know what loneliness is. When you’re at the end of your rope. I never forget those feelings.’ – John Prine

‘Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness. We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues. We read for the pleasure of thinking another person’s thoughts.’ – Sam Harris

‘Everyone desires relationships and community. Most people want to belong to a cohesive, like-minded group. It staves off loneliness. It promotes identity. These are natural and very human instincts.’ – Joshua Ferris

‘As an only child, I embrace loneliness. Hollywood loneliness helped to understand Marilyn Monroe in a real way. I was able to portray her very well.’ – Catherine Hicks

‘Loneliness sucks. It’s a slog. It feels wonderful and exhilarating when someone makes it go away. But love is a whole different ball game.’ – Lynn Coady

‘The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one’s people that has not previously been taken into account.’ – Alice Walker

‘Directing is all tied up with childhood loneliness. It’s such an odd thing to end up doing.’ – Paul Greengrass

‘I don’t believe in cutting out people from the past. It doesn’t give strength; it just gives loneliness.’ – Carla Bruni

‘Every day, people serve their neighbors and our nation in many different ways, from helping a child learn and easing the loneliness of those without a family to defending our freedom overseas. It is in this spirit of dedication to others and to our country that I believe service should be broadly and deeply encouraged.’ – John McCain

‘Loneliness is, I think, people’s biggest fear, whether they are conscious of it or not.’ – Andrew Stanton

‘I’m interested in telling a story about a gay man and what he’s going through as an artist and as a lonely, single gay man. I want to reveal what I know about loneliness.’ – Jordan Gavaris

‘There is a crisis that is not political – an epidemic of loneliness, of sadness – and we’re completely unequal to dealing with it.’ – Richard Flanagan

‘I have a lot of friends, but my biggest fear is loneliness. I miss my family in Mumbai, and my biggest nightmare every day is to go back home alone.’ – Deepika Padukone

‘My first novel, ‘The Tiger’s Daughter,’ embodies the loneliness I felt but could not acknowledge, even to myself, as I negotiated the no man’s land between the country of my past and the continent of my present.’ – Bharati Mukherjee

‘I started keeping a diary in third grade and, in solidarity with Anne Frank, gave it a name and made it my confidante. To this day, I feel comforted and relieved of loneliness, no matter how foreign my surroundings, if I have a pad and a pen with which to record my experiences.’ – Ariel Levy

‘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

”The Babadook,’ written and directed by a woman, is a gorgeously told female-focused story of grief, longing, loneliness, and what mourning can become.’ – Emily V. Gordon

‘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 did not find that writing a diary with a lead male character differed in any essential way from writing one with a female character. They all had the same challenges in terms of attempting to establish an identity, coping with loneliness, friendships, relationships.’ – Kathryn Lasky

‘To be poor does not mean you lack the means to extend charity to another. You may lack money or food, but you have the gift of friendship to overwhelm the loneliness that grips the lives of so many.’ – Stanley Hauerwas

‘I would have to say loneliness is next to uncleanliness.’ – Janeane Garofalo

‘A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness, as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men – and people in general.’ – Lorraine Hansberry

‘Why do I write? It’s not that I want people to think I am smart, or even that I am a good writer. I write because I want to end my loneliness.’ – Jonathan Safran Foer

‘A lot of women are afraid of loneliness, so when they see a woman who can live alone, then they think, ‘Hmm, I can do that.’ But you need an example, and that is why I am proud to say I have divorced three husbands.’ – Nawal El Saadawi

‘There is no loneliness like that of a failed marriage.’ – Alexander Theroux

‘The older generation had greater respect for land than science. But we live in an age when science, more than soil, has become the provider of growth and abundance. Living just on the land creates loneliness in an age of globality.’ – Shimon Peres

‘The pain of loneliness seems to be part of the mortal experience. But the Lord in His mercy has made it so that we need never deal with the challenges of mortality alone.’ – Sheri L. Dew

‘When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the cold space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly.’ – Hilaire Belloc

‘Loneliness can become a downward spiral.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘I took the test for AIDS. I began to hate people who were not sick. Those people are monsters, I would think, believing that they are well because of moral superiority, because they are good. I identified with the loneliness of the sick. I felt that there was something pure about them.’ – Isabelle Adjani

‘I think I’d like to be able to heal people’s pain, whether it is hunger, loneliness or whatever.’ – Brandi Chastain

‘Loneliness is an integral part of travelling. I used to think it was the downside to travelling, but now I realise it is a necessary educative part of it to be embraced.’ – David Mitchell

‘There is a definite loneliness in the game. Most people stay away from you since they think they’re intruding upon your time. And after the ball game, when it’s 11 o’clock and you want to eat dinner some place, the restaurants are closed.’ – Lou Brock

‘The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn’t subdue you and make you feel abject. It’s stimulating loneliness.’ – Anne Morrow Lindbergh

‘The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.’ – Edward Gibbon

‘No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.’ – Georges Bernanos

‘I had become, with the approach of night, once more aware of loneliness and time – those two companions without whom no journey can yield us anything.’ – Lawrence Durrell

‘Loneliness is the universal problem of rich people.’ – Joan Collins

‘Only children are weird. The only children I know, including myself, are either superweird or very talented and special or a mix of the two. I think there was always a certain independence and loneliness – I had a lot of imaginary friends as a kid.’ – Rachel Bloom

‘Loneliness and hunger were my fortunes of creation.’ – Mo Yan

‘But the battles against loneliness that I fought when I was 16 are very different from those I fought when I was 27, and those are very different from the ones I fight at 44.’ – Tom Hanks

‘The loneliness is when you pick up and move, even if you are not originally from that place, and you have some memories that you want to embrace. Having a life in transit, I feel like you are always looking out the back window.’ – Ajay Naidu

‘I’ve never minded solitude. For a writer, it’s a natural condition. But caring for a dementia sufferer leads to a peculiar kind of loneliness.’ – Laurie Graham

‘We know that chronic loneliness has consequences. It certainly depresses our mood. And in terms of our health, people who struggle with loneliness also have an increased risk for cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, and anxiety. Loneliness is also associated with a shorter lifespan.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘I started putting down my thoughts on paper out of loneliness while I was studying in America. I was very close to my grandfather, and when he died, I couldn’t visit home. I started scribbling those thoughts.’ – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

‘We have to live with our loneliness and the destiny that drives each person to the order of things.’ – Cecile de France

‘Loneliness and rootlessness are just symptoms of an insecurity that assails us all when hitting this midlife moment. The world appears intent on blanking you out.’ – Mariella Frostrup

‘I also wanted to express the strength of cinema to hide reality, while being entertaining. Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness.’ – Pedro Almodovar

‘People should be conscious of the large contribution made by anything that gets people together easily in the reduction of loneliness and emotional well-being.’ – Daniel Kahneman

‘When even the most strictly logical mind looks round and investigates the phenomena attending its own existence, perhaps the first fact to attract attention by its strongly marked prominence is the remarkable loneliness of man. He stands alone.’ – Richard Jefferies

‘I had to learn compassion. Had to learn what it felt like to hate, and to forgive and to love and be loved. And to lose people close to me. Had to feel deep loneliness and sorrow. And then I could write.’ – Louise Penny

‘Acting is the greatest answer to my loneliness that I have found.’ – Claire Danes

‘The surest cure for vanity is loneliness.’ – Tom Wolfe

‘One of the illusions that we live by is that we can really know anybody else, and we’re often surprised by traits in people that we thought we knew very well. The struggle to overcome loneliness, which is sort of our universal burden, leads us to leap to conclusions about who other people are.’ – Thomas McGuane

‘My first two novels featured narrators who were aggressively unattached: They couldn’t form any sort of genuine relationship. So I had thoroughly explored the geography of loneliness and isolation.’ – Gillian Flynn

‘What makes loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but this: I have only my own burden to bear.’ – Dag Hammarskjold

‘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

‘My sense of loneliness was not particularly great until I reached sixty. From that time on, I would have given an ex-king’s ransom if I had been able, in my youth to seduce a lady into thinking of me as a handyman and provider around the house.’ – Frank Crowninshield

‘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

‘I think ‘In The Heat Of The Night’ was one of the most influential films on me. Looking back now, I can see how influential it was on my screenwriting because here you have what looks to be a crime procedural, and it’s actually a study in race and loneliness, and a perception of an era.’ – Taylor Sheridan

‘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

‘Poverty is clearly one source of emotional suffering, but there are others, like loneliness.’ – Nassim Nicholas Taleb

‘Gatherings and, simultaneously, loneliness are the conditions of a writer’s life.’ – Jerzy Kosinski

‘I have a feeling of complete balance. The sea, the house, the loneliness, the light. Everything is clearer. Much more precise. I have the feeling that I am living on a limit, and I’m crossing that limit sometimes.’ – Ingmar Bergman

‘There is a huge sense of loneliness as people leave villages and move to cities. It’s hard to find that human connection as you move away from where you started.’ – Mohsin Hamid

‘Where the despair of loneliness and poverty haunts every hour, the optimism to embark on new projects cannot find a place to alight on the brain’s cortex. Poverty itself is an enormous obstacle to an enlightened and enlightening – not to say healthy – old age.’ – Sherwin B. Nuland

‘Feelings such as loneliness, longing or love are sometimes hard to put into words; maybe that’s why we all love music, because it resonates with something we can’t share.’ – Agnes Obel

‘I was really devastated following the loss of my first pregnancy, not just a physical pain, but an aching sense of loss and loneliness like my body had let me down.’ – Porsha Williams

‘When I decided to be a singer, my mother warned me I’d be alone a lot. Basically we all are. Loneliness comes with life.’ – Whitney Houston

‘If there is a look of human eyes that tells of perpetual loneliness, so there is also the familiar look that is the sign of perpetual crowds.’ – Alice Meynell

‘Easter tells us of something children can’t understand, because it addresses things they don’t yet have to know: the weariness of life, the pain, the profound loneliness and hovering fear of meaninglessness.’ – Frederica Mathewes-Green

‘Because of my childhood where I was constantly by myself, I always feel lonely. I have a lot of people that I absolutely love and I know love me but I can’t get rid of that feeling of loneliness no matter who I’m with – even with my children.’ – Natalia Vodianova

‘A man in a bookstore buys a book on loneliness and every woman in the store hits on him. A woman buys a book on loneliness and the store clears out.’ – Douglas Coupland

‘As much as we complain about it, though, there’s part of us that is drawn to a hurried life. It makes us feel important. It keeps the adrenaline pumping. It means I don’t have to look too closely at my heart or life. It keeps us from feeling our loneliness.’ – John Ortberg

‘Peter Pan is kind of this metaphor for someone or something that makes you feel at home, that brings you out of loneliness, that makes you free. And that’s exactly what music does for me.’ – Ruth B

‘The more specific you are about a very general feeling of loneliness is actually how you connect with people.’ – Phoebe Bridgers

‘I really love baseball. The guys and the game, and I love the challenge of describing things. The only thing I hate – and I know you have to be realistic and pay the bills in this life – is the loneliness on the road.’ – Vin Scully

‘Being a good host offsets the deprivation and loneliness of my youth.’ – Alan Ladd

‘I make a genuine distinction between loneliness and aloneness. I know what each is like. There are times I’m lonely. But there are also many times when I need to be alone, when I don’t want the feeling of someone else in the house other than the cats.’ – Edward Bryant

‘As far as loneliness, I feel Los Angeles and its layout, having to drive everywhere – it is a lonely place. It’s an isolated city in that respect because you’re driving to places alone listening to the radio.’ – Jason Schwartzman

‘Many of my characters struggle with loneliness, that is fair to say.’ – Jhumpa Lahiri

‘But the West of the old times, with its strong characters, its stern battles and its tremendous stretches of loneliness, can never be blotted from my mind.’ – Buffalo Bill

‘As prevalent as loneliness is, many people don’t recognize that people that they know may very well be suffering from loneliness. It’s important for many reasons, one of which is that it has a profound impact on health.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘If loneliness is part of our essence, that is, our essential nature, that is only because of the way, in practical terms, we actually exist; that is, the way we move and work and live in the world.’ – Brendan Myers

‘I think one of the most poignant things is unrequited love and loneliness.’ – Wilbur Smith

‘One of the things that people complain about is loneliness, disconnectedness. If you live in a society where your life is rarely threatened and most of your relationships are more on an economic exchange basis, then this could leave people feeling less connected.’ – Steven Pinker

‘Reading – the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay.’ – William Styron

‘I’m learning to deal with my loneliness because then nobody can muck me around any more.’ – Amanda Eliasch

‘One of the things reading does, it makes your loneliness manageable if you are an essentially lonely person.’ – Jamaica Kincaid

‘Wars often begin with enthusiastic vigor but typically settle into costly, dirty business characterized for soldiers by fear, frustration, and loneliness.’ – Stanley A. McChrystal

‘But I also think all of the great stories in literature deal with loneliness. Sometimes it’s by way of heartbreak, sometimes it’s by way of injustice, sometimes it’s by way of fate. There’s an infinite number of ways to examine it.’ – Tom Hanks

‘It was a bizarre existence I led in my early twenties – that cliche of the comedian who goes out and entertains a roomful of people and then goes home to a lonely bedsit was unbelievably poignant for me because that was exactly what I was doing. I had periods of real loneliness.’ – Paul Merton

‘My music is very personal. I’ve created it in solitude. I face a white wall and beller. I like that sound – the expression of loneliness. That’s what it’s all about.’ – Dwight Yoakam

‘One major challenge within happiness is loneliness. The more I’ve learned about happiness, the more I’ve come to believe that loneliness is a terrible, common, and important obstacle to consider.’ – Gretchen Rubin

‘Celebrities can suffer a horrible loneliness even though they have millions of fans. I started doing meditations because I realized that a spiritual path was necessary.’ – Donovan

‘I’m not sure whether I’ve been happy. After my last book tour, I sat on my balcony with a cup of tea. I thought: ‘You can’t rewind the movie. I’ve spent more than half my life in the Middle East. There have been great moments of horror and depression and loneliness.” – Robert Fisk

‘You always know. You have basic needs, and when they aren’t met, your body sends signals. Hunger, loneliness, exhaustion, thirst, and fear are all signals that something is missing, and you need to act on it now.’ – Mel Robbins

‘To a pagan, there is no purpose to suffering. As a result, he lives a life of loneliness and frustration.’ – Mother Angelica

‘Karaoke was my family’s happy secret. In those early years in America, like many immigrants, my parents struggled with poverty and loneliness, but they also built provisional families, and inside our bubble there was joy, understanding, an intimate language I could never translate – and above all there was song.’ – Jenny Zhang

‘I believe a lot of disease comes from anxiety, loneliness.’ – Tom Cochrane

‘You write a story about loneliness, and you grab them all because everybody’s an expert on that one.’ – Theodore Sturgeon

‘I kind of crave loneliness.’ – Sam Heughan

‘There’s a lot of loneliness in a book tour. A lot of grilled cheese sandwiches alone in your hotel at night.’ – Margaret Stohl

‘When you walk into a room, and you’re the only one of something – the only woman or the only African American – that immediate feeling of loneliness happens.’ – Stacy Brown-Philpot

‘Whether it’s music, loss of something, loneliness or friendship – if that emotion is heightened in some way and painted to fit in between the covers of 32 pages, that can become a picture book.’ – Chris Raschka

‘I do remember when I was starting acting, going from one set to the next, with not much else going on in my life. And at the end of the day, you get back to your hotel room and just feel this awful loneliness, because the cameras have stopped rolling.’ – Julianne Moore

‘If you write fiction, you’re by yourself. There are certain advantages to that in that you don’t have to explain anything to anybody. But when you get in with others who share the loneliness of the whole enterprise, you’re not lonely anymore.’ – Denis Johnson

‘My inspiration are the woman, friendship, and loneliness.’ – Enrique Iglesias

‘It would be really wonderful if people connected to the loneliness of what it means to be a human being in the world today.’ – Elisabeth Shue

‘In swimming, especially training out in the ocean and open water, you got fogged-over goggles, you’re stuck with your own thoughts – there’s great benefits to that, deep thinking like that after many hours, but there’s also tremendous loneliness. You burn out. You want to run, jump, ski, do anything. So at age 30, I was finished.’ – Diana Nyad

‘Online communities are an expression of loneliness.’ – Joanne Harris

‘Remember that although the distinction can be difficult to draw, loneliness and solitude are different.’ – Gretchen Rubin

‘Girls are worried about the same things: loneliness, falling out with friends, the pain of being excluded, another girl trying to poach their best friend, and worrying about how to make friends or keep friends.’ – Carrie Hope Fletcher

‘People may see me as a luxurious star, but I am always thinking I can be represented by my psychological world that is fraught with vanity, loneliness, and always feels inadequate.’ – G-Dragon

‘In 2016, I left Korea to further my modelling career overseas, and I spent a lot of time alone. At the time, the emotion that I felt the most was loneliness.’ – HoYeon Jung

‘I love my mother the most in the world. She has seen a lot of poverty and loneliness and is very simple. Whenever I am in trouble, I go far away from her, as she is not at all strong. If I see her breaking, I break.’ – Yo Yo Honey Singh

‘Combat stress isn’t the only problem for soldiers isolated in Iraq – there are family issues, re-integration issues when soldiers go home on leave, loneliness.’ – John Sandford

‘At the risk of sounding like a spoilsport, I’d say that pagans have about the same experience of otherness and isolation as anyone else. We’re not special in that regard. But this is because the problem of loneliness is almost universal – and that, to my mind, makes it much more serious.’ – Brendan Myers

‘There is extraordinary similarities between the Midwest in America and Europe in that there is this sense of vast, open sky and loneliness and cold.’ – Ajay Naidu

‘I’m just a believer in keeping all of the creative brain cells moving and working even when you’re not working because the inevitable loneliness and boring drought in the actor’s world, it can eat you alive.’ – Nikki Reed

‘Even though loneliness affects so many of us, it has gotten scant research attention compared to related conditions like depression or anxiety.’ – Robin Marantz Henig

‘We often refer to loneliness as something negative. And we look at it as a weakness.’ – Jay Shetty

‘In my adolescence, I think I felt very outcast; I felt lonely. I felt great loneliness, and sometimes I wouldn’t partake in Christmas, and I would go off and wander in the streets of Melbourne.’ – Michael Leunig

‘Oh, this absolute loneliness and the game – loving to play the game, loving to go and tell stories to men that certainly weren’t true, just for the sport of it, just to see how they would react.’ – Jennifer Beals

‘To Tennessee Williams we owe a special debt. In a tragic age, he has transformed loneliness by naming it for us, suffered sordidness with beauty, graced poor hurt lives with love and pity.’ – William Jay Smith

‘I’ve been in that angst of loneliness, where you’re really alone in the universe, except for the dog.’ – William Shatner

‘Total intimacy is a myth; that said, a particular kind of loneliness can be both beautiful and fruitful.’ – Lauren Groff

‘From the boardroom to the bedroom, we’re connected 24/7, yet loneliness is at an all-time high. More people are reaching for mobile devices than for the hand of someone in need. Where did our humanity go?’ – Elizabeth Kapu’uwailani Lindsey

‘There’s definitely a loneliness and, like, an internal element to being a performer.’ – Anna Faris

‘My mind was so geared towards being a performing artist, singing all these classical pieces, but the sense of loneliness I got when I moved from New York to El Paso meant that writing turned into singing. I’d sing all these songs, and they’d make me feel better. Songs that crafted the way my life was going to go.’ – Khalid

‘A lot of my songs are about loneliness and losing relationships. Even the ones that are happy, there’s a lonely undertone to them.’ – Khalid

‘There’s an incredible amount of loneliness that comes with child stardom because you’re isolated from your society.’ – Cole Sprouse

‘There comes a real loneliness in celebrity where you’re constantly told you’re part of an out group in your own society.’ – Cole Sprouse

‘I think ‘Speech & Debate’ surprised people because it’s a play about teenagers that took the teenagers very seriously. They are very real. People wanted to see if they identified with one of the kids, that loneliness, that yearning for something bigger. That feeling of being stuck, it’s very adolescent, but those kinds of feelings linger on.’ – Stephen Karam

‘Eleanor Oliphant isn’t me or anyone I know. Of course I’ve felt loneliness – everybody does – but Eleanor and her experiences are fictional.’ – Gail Honeyman

‘If I’ve helped fuel the debate on loneliness in some small way, that is wonderful.’ – Gail Honeyman

‘Loneliness is a huge issue for both individuals and for society. It’s taken a long time for the issue to be treated seriously and for us to begin to understand the impact it can have.’ – Gail Honeyman

‘When I look at my own work, I see love, loss, and loneliness. Part of it might be that I was an army brat. I moved around all the time. There was a sense of nothing being permanent.’ – Elizabeth Berg

‘When I lived alone in Chicago, I had a lot of loneliness issues.’ – Elizabeth Berg

‘I think I write serious comedies. I would love to be able to write for pure pleasure, but the undertow is always loneliness.’ – Patrick Marber

‘I have always been very interested in the idea of loneliness and the presumption that romantic relationships are supposed to rid you of that.’ – Ayobami Adebayo

‘Those reflective moments for me usually come from loneliness and separation from people.’ – Soccer Mommy

‘Songs bring us into connection with each other. When they resonate, when we’re in resonance, singing together, we become one for that 3 1/2 or four minutes the song lasts. It takes away that isolated loneliness that modern life is so full of.’ – Mary Gauthier

‘In my early years, I couldn’t find a community. I couldn’t find anybody like me. I felt so isolated. There was nothing but shame and loneliness.’ – Mary Gauthier

‘I’ve definitely had the long stretches of time in my personal life where I’ve felt an intense loneliness and a desperation to feel something real and to have something that truly meant something in my life.’ – Brett Gelman

‘I keep making the music I do because I feel very purposeful about making things that would be helpful or quell some loneliness in people. I really needed that when I listened to music growing up and even now, so I don’t mind that sense of duty.’ – Perfume Genius

‘Just before a fight, as the ring empties, you can feel it. There is danger and loneliness all around you. Soon it’s just the three of you in there: the referee, your opponent, and you. You’re in a very lonely moment then. But, strangely, that’s when I feel most comfortable. The ring becomes my office, and I go to work.’ – David Haye

‘There’s just an incredible amount of loneliness as a mother, all this solitude no one really speaks to.’ – Catherine Reitman

‘The disturbing truth we have to recognize is that Bourdain is not alone in his loneliness and depression.’ – Ben Domenech

‘Even the finest actors will have great difficulty showing somebody’s loneliness. To put an actor on a chair and ask him to do nothing and yet tell the viewer everything about the character, it’s a difficult task.’ – Manoj Bajpayee

‘The main thing that triggered my depression was my isolation that was imposed on me by becoming the wife of the prime minister, and leaving my home, my family. I was young, very young, and very naive and very hopeful and enthusiastic about my wonderful new life, but it was the loneliness and the lack of being able to properly relate to people.’ – Margaret Trudeau

‘Sometimes, when we’re on tour, I’ll find an empty room or a corner and I’ll just sing. It heals something in me, be it some kind of isolation or loneliness. It’s really quite beautiful that singing can do that.’ – Freya Ridings

‘The cliche of call-centre work is that it’s mainly older people who will stay on the line to talk to you. Whether through loneliness or good manners, they tend to allow you to finish your sentences, hear you out.’ – Sara Pascoe

‘I was living alone, so I’d get quite lonely and running became a way to combat my loneliness and de-stress.’ – Katie Piper

‘I think everyone is lonely whether you are in a good marriage or a bad marriage somewhere down the line you become lonely, and to get rid of that loneliness you have to try really hard.’ – Neena Gupta

‘I have found ways to kill this ever-present feeling of loneliness. I try a new dish and experiment with food, I’ll clean my cupboard, do the little things in the house, and I keep myself busy. I find things to do.’ – Neena Gupta

‘Loneliness is devastating our mental and physical health and, at its worst, is killing us. Yet thankfully, unlike some conditions, we can easily cure it. We just need the will.’ – Owen Jones

‘There’s a difference between loneliness and solitude. You pursue solitude, I think. But loneliness is a completely different isolating thing.’ – Dervla Kirwan

‘I was doing this really wacky sketch comedy but at the same time writing these dark, cerebral plays about characters coming to grips with their loneliness and heartbreak. My dream job has always been a way to combine the two. I would say ‘BoJack Horseman’ is the culmination of all of that.’ – Raphael Bob-Waksberg

‘Year after year, politicians have drafted huge piles of legislation on the assumption that most people are not good. And we know the consequences of that policy: inequality, loneliness and mistrust.’ – Rutger Bregman

‘What defines loneliness is our internal comfort level.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘I trained in internal medicine, and I expected most of my time would be spent on diabetes or heart disease or cancer. What I didn’t expect was that so many people I saw would be struggling with loneliness.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘When I was Surgeon General, I spent a lot of time talking to people in living rooms and town halls all across the country, and one of the things I started to notice was that behind many of the stories of addiction, violence, depression and anxiety were threads of loneliness.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘There are several factors in modern society that contribute to loneliness. One is that we are more mobile than we have been in decades past, which is fantastic in many respects, but also leads to us to move away from communities that we grew up with and got to know over time.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘Service is a powerful pathway of getting out of loneliness. It takes the focus off of you and puts it onto someone else.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘I have experienced loneliness at many, many points in my life and felt this profound sense of shame about it – all the years when I was a child that I struggled with feeling lonely when I was scared to go to school and petrified of walking into the elementary school cafeteria because I was worried I wouldn’t have anyone to sit with.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘When it comes to our relationship with loneliness, specifically, it’s important to understand how our relative introversion or extroversion informs our preference for social interaction.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘My journey to working on loneliness was certainly not an expected one or planned one.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘When I went through my confirmation hearing to serve as surgeon general they asked me what my priorities would be and I didn’t list loneliness in that priority list because it was not one at the time.’ – Vivek Murthy

‘We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, want, magic – of missing people, avoid others – like loneliness.’ – Koena Mitra

‘And there are a lot of people like that, who feel loneliness and despair but cover it up.’ – Christina Pickles

‘I talk to people now, and they thought I was so confident. I was doing all this awesome stuff onstage, and they didn’t realize I was going through so much loneliness and hurt backstage. It was like high school.’ – Melina Perez

‘I am an expert in loneliness and have wandered around a great deal.’ – Sterling Hayden

‘Loneliness is definitely a theme running through the show, but I think there’s hope in it also. Loki and Sylvie find each other, and there’s hope in that for them.’ – Kate Herron

‘I’m not someone who will make a decision in haste and let loneliness decide the wrong partner for me.’ – Shamita Shetty

‘Solitude is part of my life, and I don’t mind that. I like it. I love it. I don’t allow loneliness to be part of my life, let’s put it that way. I really won’t allow it. If I feel lonely, I phone somebody or I go for a walk or a swim, get the endorphins going, because I hate feeling lonely.’ – Sheila Hancock

‘I think that’s why a lot of people are very lonely and get ill when they’re older, because I think loneliness and having no motivation, nothing to work towards… I think it kills you.’ – June Brown

‘Old people are considered worthless fuddy-duddies and often overlooked, which makes them sink into loneliness. I noticed it as soon as I started to age.’ – June Brown

‘I felt an intense loneliness after my sister died. I was seven at the time, she was eight, and I realised after her death that she accepted me for who I was.’ – June Brown

‘If there’s anything to be said in a broad way about different audiences it’s that I live in a major city, and those themes of isolation, protectiveness, loneliness tend to resonate with other people in major cities.’ – Simon Amstell