How to Be Alone Quotes

“When you have a lot of shine to you, as so many bighearted people often do, you can attract a lot of people easily, because people are drawn to it, that kind of light. It can be so easy to forget that not everyone deserves your shine. But when you spend so much of your earliest years being told you have no shine at all, even though you're pretty sure maybe you do, and someone finally tells you they see it too, you do, you have it, you want to give them everything. Because of this, more often than not, you're not falling in love with them, you're using them as a way to fall in love with yourself.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“At times I've struggled to feel seen, to have my history feel seen, to have where I come from feel seen because I 'turned out great.' But that doesn't meant that I Am Fine. I am working every day, tirelessly, like you wouldn't believe, on being fine, f**king finally, can we get this over with, I'm so tired and I just want to travel and eat and smile and move through the world with a semblance of peace.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“When I’m with friends now, as an adult, I don’t want to have polite adult tea and talk about our jobs. I don’t want to sit in dress pants while we talk about a New Yorker article. Not really. I want to lie on the couch, cozy in blankets, watching movies, feeling safe enough to pass out and stay the night if we want to. I want to turn English muffins into foundations for pizza bagels at ten p.m., even though they’re not as good as bagels and we know it. I want to tell each other things we can’t talk about online, or we can’t tell our coworkers, and to cry and still be lovable, even if we’re in pain sometimes. To break in front of each other, and pick up the pieces together, before making some dumb joke and telling each other we love each other and knowing we’re safe to be all of it.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“The Friend Zone, while not always ideal, is still a goddamn gift, and really, the definition of true love. If you love someone, or even just care about them, as you claim to, you don’t mind the Friend Zone at all, because sure, fine, you don’t get to French them and stuff, but you get to know them and be close to them and hear all the dumb things that run through their minds and all the brilliant things that they don’t even know are brilliant. You get to know them and share the same air, and you’re alive at the same time, which is a gift in and of itself. If you don’t want the Friend Zone, you don’t want the girl. Simple as that.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“I really just want someone to come over and brush my hair or let me cry in their lap while they pet my head and tell me I'll be okay." And I cried harder because I felt so ashamed to want that from a friend—from someone who was not a romantic partner or a parent⁠—because I didn't have either right now but I still wanted it. We section off physical comfort and intimacy so heavily. We reserve it for partners only, and platonic friends can only chit-chat and that's it. How can you tell people to be okay with being single while also telling them they can only get the basic human needs of physical touch from not being single?”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“People who reject you for being broken after they're the ones who broke you, or who act like they're not the problem and the problem is the issues you had before them, are evil. They just are.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“I can’t describe to you how it feels to go from thinking you have a true partner, true best friend, and true soul mate to seeing that person become your abuser—and then seeing them cheat on you and see that maybe you were a mark all along, a pawn in a game you didn’t see coming that played out exactly the way they intended.

I’ve experienced so many shades of this before, and all I can say is this: If you see a woman who is working super hard to become who she’s meant to be and to achieve the things she wants to achieve, and you have nothing to add to her life or to give back to her in any way, please just leave her the fuck alone.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“So if you raised yourself and you’re listening to this, I am so proud of you. You raised a hell of a kid and it wasn’t easy! I can’t even imagine — no one can! Okay, I kind of can, but still. But you’re here and you could have easily backslid into pain and nothingness and worthlessness and hopelessness. And maybe you did backslide, time and again. But every time, you climbed back up and tried to be kinder and softer and find more room in your heart for compassion instead of hatred; hope instead of defeat. And let me tell you, someone (YOU) raised you right.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“It’s absolutely better to be by yourself than with someone you don’t even like. Or whom you do like but they don’t make you feel super great.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“I wish I could give you a clean and simple business card explaining what happened so I could be the kind of orphan who would immediately make sense to everyone. Like if my parents had a socially recognizable problem that immediately explained their inability to take care of me and my sister. Something I could put on paper and hand to people as proof. “Here. This is why.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“There’s a very particular no-mans-land that comes with having alive parents who are technically there, could technically take you in if you really needed somewhere to go, but if you went there you wouldn’t be any safer than anywhere else.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“So you take physical affection when you can get it, almost feeling guilty when you do. You might sleep with someone just to get to the cuddling part, knowing full well that if cuddling had been on the table, you might not have even slept with them to begin with. You might get super happy when your yoga teachers do adjustments because having someone touch you in a safe, gentle way⁠—even for two seconds⁠—feels like it changes your whole world. I know I do. Partly because human beings are designed to be physically comforted by one another.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“And more than anything, feel proud of yourself, because you didn’t let being other kill you. You’re still here, and one day maybe you’ll have a family of your own and you’ll love the holidays. Or maybe you’ll never like this time of year. Either way, you’ll still be here, living. Sometimes that’s the bravest thing of all. And if you don’t believe me, it’s a line in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and as I and I both know, that show is everything.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“I’m open to being attracted to any gender and rarely attracted to any, so miss me with this stupid idea that in any room everyone is appealing to me because they’re technically a gender I have dated.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“I’ve never had that thing of like “Leave stuff at your parents’ house.” Because the second I left home, I gave away or threw away everything and I regret it all the time but I know why I did it. I didn’t know if I was ever coming back or could come back and I didn’t want to leave something and then later need it and have no way to get it back.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“When you don’t have the affection and or attachment you should have at home, it’s totally natural that you’d quickly become someone who is OBSESSED with friendships.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“Let me briefly affirm that you choose your labels. You choose those you show them to. You choose when the labels change, if they change. None of us is just one of anything.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“If I have ever loved someone on any level, in a way, I always will. And I expect, perhaps naïvely, that those people will always care about me.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“One flaw in my make up, perhaps (though I don’t really see it as one), is that once you’ve meant something to me you’re in my heart forever.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“We section off physical comfort and intimacy so heavily. We reserve it for partners only, and platonic friends can only chitchat and that's it. How can you tell people to be okay with being single while also telling them they can only get the basic human needs of physical touch from not being single?”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“What if you fall outside all the boxes? What are you supposed to do then, other than wrestle with the feelings of otherness, the "oh shit, my sexual-identity deadline is here and I don't have all my paperwork filled out yet"? There really is something about being able to put yourself into one concise, well-marked, tidy section of society, dusting your hands off on your pants. "That's that. Now I can move on with my day." But it's not that simple.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“How many times I've sat with people, even as an adult, wishing I could hold their hand, or lie in their lap, or cry in front of them, or tell them how I really felt about them, or ask them how they really felt about me, and how many hours I wasted thinking of how I would do it, when I should do it, begging myself to "just do it now! Who cares!" Then once I did it, I'd wish I'd done it much sooner because it's was fine, it was safe, I was safe.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“For one, I think our friendship blurred a lot of heteronormative lines, and from stories I've heard from other women, this happens a lot. It doesn't even necessarily mean either one of you is queer, but when you're a teenager, there is an overall pressure to be "normal," and spending that much time with someone of the same sex can quickly call "normal" into question. This type of intimacy and closeness is not often socially sanctioned, as we're told it's reserved for your romantic partner, who—in your teen years especially—is "supposed" to be someone of the opposite sex.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“Bamboo grows underground for three years before it sprouts up to thirty feet tall. Nothing blooms year-round, so if you need to be alone right now, that's what you need.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“Those people (and shitty TV shows who make cheap jokes about bisexuality not being a thing) have no idea how much time bisexual and queer people spend thinking about their sexuality. The”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“nothing ruins Halloween faster than a male Wiccan’s penis.)”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“Apparently she knows.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“You know your whole story. You know everything.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“At this point in my life, I often fear it’s too late, as if there were a sign-up deadline for intimacy and friends and family and I just kept missing it.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“Can we just eat scones now and make out and have fun and change the world and be cute for the rest of our lives?”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't