Recluse Quotes

“Nobody enjoys the company of others as intensely as someone who usually avoids the company of others.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“now it’s computers and more computers
and soon everybody will have one,
3-year-olds will have computers
and everybody will know everything
about everybody else
long before they meet them.
nobody will want to meet anybody
else ever again
and everybody will be
a recluse
like I am now.”
― Charles Bukowski, The Continual Condition: Poems

“...very lonely and, often, very unhappy, with the poignant misery that comes to lonely people who long to be social and cannot, somehow, step naturally and unselfconsciously into some friendly group”
― Shirley Jackson, Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories

“He went down again into the darkness and seclusion of the wood. But he knew that the seclusion of the wood was illusory. The industrial noises broke the solitude, the sharp lights, though unseen, mocked it. A man could no longer be private and withdrawn. The world allows no hermits.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

“But now more often the old stale hopeless weariness overcame him: the black sickness which almost no one else, certainly not his nearest dearest friends, could understand at all. The idea of giving up the world, which had given him for a time so much life-energy, appeared now as a sort of fake suicide, a ghastly play-image of his death. This fatal falseness-of-heart was what perhaps Father Damien, on further acquaintance, had now seen in him.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“She doesn't want to see anyone. She's happy like that, I think. Always relieved at the end of a visit.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“The life of the party is actually an introverted recluse. She knows the difference between being alone and being lonely. The latter is a feeling she has yet to experience. If she invites you into her world, she plans on keeping you.”
― Kristin Michelle Elizabeth

“Only by fully preparing oneself for people's absence can one be at ease with their presence. A recluse, I have begun to understand, is not a person for whom a connection with another person is unattainable or meaningless, but one who feels she must abstain from people because a connection is an affliction, or worse, an addiction. It has not occurred to me, until I met Trevor, to ask: 'Will I see you again?' What had precluded me from asking is this: 'Perhaps I won't see you again, and if so, goodbye for now and goodbye forever.”
― Yiyun Li, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life

“It wasn’t the first time someone had disappeared from my life due to my own fault: due to my tendency to solitude and silence, dut to my sometimes unjustifiable reserve, due to my inability to keep relationships alive (even those I have with people I love or who genuinely interest me). This has always been one of my great defects, and it has caused me more than one disappointment and has dissapointed other more than once. There’s nothing I can do aboutn it, however, because nobody changes their nature by the mere force of will.”
― Juan Gabriel Vásquez, La forma de las ruinas

“The Howard Hughes thing hadn’t actually sounded like such a bad deal until about...oh, eight thirty-five this morning. Something about having his ex carry him to the bathroom and help him wash his balls just took all the fun out of becoming an eccentric recluse.”
― Heidi Betts, Knock Me for a Loop

“He felt that if he could not be alone, and if he could not be left alone, he would die.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

“And I was upset to find how really reluctant I was to leave my little flat. It was as if I was almost frightened. Spasms of prophetic homesickness pierced me as I rearranged the china and dusted it with my handkerchief, obsessive visions of burglaries and desecrations.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“He would be alone, and apart from life, which was all he wanted.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

“In a century or two this planet will have been destroyed by external cosmic forces or by the senseless activity of the human race. Human life is a freak phenomenon, soon to be blotted out. That is a consoling thought. Meanwhile we are surrounded by strange invisible entities, possibly your angels."

"I hope so."

"Ah, you think they are good, they cannot be good, there is no good, the tendency to evil is overwhelming. One has only to think of the horrors of sex, its violence, its cruelty, its filthy vulgarity, its descent into bestial degradation. You had better go and dream in your monastery."

"Would you come and visit me there?"

"Of course not. I do not visit. Only, unfortunately, am sometimes visited."

"You don't want to discuss — you know — what happened? My priest said — "

"No."

"I care about how you are, I love you."

"You still fail to realise how this sort of talk sickens me. Now please go. This will do for a welcome home scene. Tell them not to come. I desire to be left alone.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“Not antisocial, just wanted some peace
Yes, I have a low tolerance for superficialities
Quiet on the outside but my mind's a chaos
Music, movies, poetry, and cosmos
What makes life worth living?
Yes, I do love overthinking
Alone but never lonely
My mind's perpetually busy
of things, not everyone might comprehend
I usually do not follow the trend
Not a snob, more of a wallflower
a loner who celebrates solitude like no other.”
― Miss Rainbow Moonfire

“I could not see other human beings at present.”
― Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head

“She thought, I am becoming a recluse. Yes, that's it, that is the way.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“Ruefully, nobody perceives me as exceptionally gifted, intelligent, handsome, or physically strong. My sense of alienation stems from an inferiority complex, depressive nature, and manic tendencies that repulse other people. For many years, I passively accepted my clumsiness, uselessness, and lack of capacity for learning by avoiding serious literature and other opportunities for personal growth. I embraced personal ignorance by favoring tactile sensations and gross pleasure afforded in a materialistic culture that revels in a hedonistic lifestyle.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“I told you I was going to retire from the world. That's still on. You remember that.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“She could hide in this small, dull life.”
― Sandra Newman, The Heavens

“Trying to play my part and stay home,
Burying my nose in a book like a gnome,
But I know how Rapunzel felt in the tower
When she wanted to feel the rain shower...
It's like being in your forties out of a fort
When your forte is dancing barefoot...
Instead of being trapped I chose to cut short,
To leave the port,
And not go kaput!”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, The Tao of Physical and Spiritual

“A sundry of intimate encounters with the vibrant intellect of perceptive thinkers dissolves a recluse’s shroud of seclusion. Can I manufacture the needed first aid kit to arrest my internal hemorrhaging? Can I stave off my mental deterioration by exploring the written words of renowned authors? Can I map a course out of my present quandary by scouring the libraries brimming with the beautiful mind works of previous generations of eminent writers? Will diligent encounters with the incisive thoughts of outstanding essayist shred the indivisible bars shielding my indeterminate self and release me from of the monochrome cage of self-imposed isolation? Can respected writers’ perceptive soul-searching create a template for my inchoative thoughts spontaneously to mature?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Let not your baser nature drag you down.
Utter no whimper, not one sigh or moan,
Hopeless of respite, solace, palm or crown
Live out your life unflinching and alone”
― Edward Lucas White, The Snout

“It was my first time going out in two hundred years. I walked along slowly.”
― Ameko Kaeruda, Dragon Daddy Diaries: A Girl Grows to Greatness Volume 1

“The hermit is the person to whom the judgment of a society matters the most.”
― PROUST MARCEL

“There is no lonlier feeling in the world than having the most amazing news to share and no-one to share it with.”
― C. Sean McGee, {self-titled}

“I keep seeing memes about how people dodge people they know in public. The consensus is that we don't want to be seen or bothered and don't want to catch up or commit to small talk with you. So, my question is: Are the people who we are dodging and who bother us, seeing these memes also?”
― Niedria D. Kenny

“Being nervous. Having anxiety. Stuttering. Autism. When you have any of those, at some point, you're forced to spend most of your time alone.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Stamerenophobia

“A loner is a person who has signed up to be banished to a lifetime of solitude.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Stamerenophobia

“People are the reasons I stay indoors.”
― Niedria Dionne Kenny