Recluse Quotes

“a mother who loses her child can no longer believe in God”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“In a recluse, the most irrevocable, lifelong rejection of the world often has as its basis an uncontrolled passion for the crowd, of such force that, finding when he does go out that he cannot win the admiration of a concierge, passers-by or even the coachman halted at the corner, he prefers to spend his life out of their sight, and gives up all activities which would make it necessary for him to leave the house.”
― Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

“I tend to avoid people who always have something to say … and those who expect me to always have something to say.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Today I am an unemployed writer living as a recluse in the great Northwoods.”
― Daniel J. Rice, The UnPeopled Season: Journal from a North Country Wilderness

“Since I neither want not can influence the events of the world, my mission is to preserve the internal integrity and equilibrium of my mind; that will be in which the manor in which I recover the purity of the original act; I shall be my own citadel, and to it I shall retire to protect myself against a hostile and corrupt world. I shall be my own citadel and, within it, my own and only citizen.”
― Carlos Fuentes, Terra Nostra

“The things she said seemed to have very little relation to the last thing she had said a minute before. She was the sort of person, Tommy thought, who might know a great deal more than she chose to reveal.”
― Agatha Christie, By the Pricking of My Thumbs

“I would suggest that the prisons I incessantly create are not designed to lock me in, rather they are designed to lock the world out. And the oddity is that either way, I am a prisoner who has sentenced himself to a prison within which I do not belong.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“He advocated that all who follow Jesus are priests, not just the official clergy. Much of what he said made sense, as did his kind manner. But why was he here now? Had this persecuted recluse emerged just to speak to me?”
― David Holdsworth, Angelos

“Writers are like onions, layers upon layers upon layers.”
― Luke Taylor, The Quiet Kill

“Seeing his daughter slowly die, coupled with his infinite sadness and misery, the clockmaker becomes a recluse to the tower of the castle and begins to build something behind closed doors, not even his daughter knows what he’s up to. For five years, she only sees him briefly at meal-times before locking himself up in the tower once again..."

"...Did he have a bathroom in the tower?"

"Yes, Jack. A big one! En-suite! Power-shower and spa! Where was I!?”
― Jonathan Dunne, Hearts Anonymous