The Lonely Stories Quotes

“My independence was still novel, and every day felt like an opportunity to indulge in my own company, to soak it in like a bubble bath.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories

“To say "a burden" is to grant oneself weight in other people's lives; to call them "loved ones" is to fake one's ability to love.”
― Yiyun Li, The Lonely Stories

“People like to say you have to he happy alone before you can be happy with someone else, but that doesn't seem true. I know plenty of people who hated being alone and whose happiness in finding a partner was magnified by relief. Their dislike, sometimes even horror, of being alone primed them for love, motivated them to commit. But if you're actually happy alone, if you've accomplished that mythical prerequisite for love, you will probably also have rendered love less necessary, made yourself less amenable to accommodating someone's needs and schedule and foibles. You run the risk of becoming set in your ways, of being unable not to feel smothered.”
― Maggie Shipstead, The Lonely Stories

“There are people I love who I wish had experienced these things, too, but if I'd waited for them, I wouldn't have done any of it.”
― Maggie Shipstead, The Lonely Stories

“It was an enormous relief to not want anything from anyone, to not worry about whether I could persuade anyone to love me.”
― Helena Fitzgerald, The Lonely Stories

“new pastime was making the quiet all right for myself, defining my boundaries so that I had space to dream. I made a list, on actual paper, of things I like to do, activities that bring me joy, pursuits that nourish me.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“Maybe the impossibility of perfect togetherness, of perfect understanding, is what makes the search for connection so enticing, the moments of resonance so profound.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“I don’t think I’m actually immune—I don’t think anyone is—but at least I wasn’t afraid of being lonely anymore, and that was almost the same thing.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“The natural beauty I saw while walking my dog—the frozen ponds and snowy beaches, the tender pale sunsets over whitecapped ocean—sometimes felt irrelevant, even discouraging, without anyone else to stand there with me and say something like, Wow, so pretty.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“Taking my trash to the island dump, I fretted I would somehow mess up, that people would see my ineptitude and judge me, know I didn’t belong. But the dump was not complicated, and no one noticed or cared what I did.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“Sometimes I can simply look into myself to know the world around me.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“I think,” Thoreau wrote in his essay “Walking,” “that I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields absolutely free from all worldly engagements.” Ha! Four hours! Clearly Thoreau did not own a smartphone.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“That something is called a tragedy, however, means it is no longer personal. One weeps out of private pain, but only when the audience swarms in and claims understanding and empathy do people call it a tragedy. One’s grief belongs to oneself; one’s tragedy, to others.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“I wonder sometimes if the price of my heightened resistance to loneliness might be higher than I realize. I'm in the phase of life when there are a lot of weddings, a lot of first babies, when, to many, the absence of those things appears troublesome, even pitiable. People like to say you have to be happy alone before you can be happy with someone else, but that doesn't seem true. I know plenty of people who hated being along and whose happiness in finding a partner was magnified by relief. Their dislike, sometimes even horror, of being alone primed them for love, motivated them to commit. But if you're actually happy alone, if you accomplished that mythical prerequisite for love, you will probably also have rendered love less necessary, made yourself less amenable to accommodating someone else's needs and schedule and foibles. You run the risk of becoming set in your ways, of being unable not to feel smothered.”
― Maggie Shipstead, The Lonely Stories

“I wonder sometimes if the price of my heightened resistance to loneliness might be higher than I realize. I’m in the phase of life when there are a lot of weddings, a lot of first babies, when, to many, the absence of those things appears troublesome, even pitiable. People like to say you have to be happy alone before you can be happy with someone else, but that doesn’t seem true. I know plenty of people who hated being alone and whose happiness in finding a partner was magnified by relief. Their dislike, sometimes even horror, of being alone primed them for love, motivated them to commit. But if you’re actually happy alone, if you’ve accomplished that mythical prerequisite for love, you will probably also have rendered love less necessary, made yourself less amenable to accommodating someone’s needs and schedule and foibles. You run the risk of becoming set in your ways, of being unable not to feel smothered. An acupuncturist, feeling my pulse, said he could tell I was an armored person. I asked my mom later if she thought I was armored, and she laughed like, duh. Would I be able to tell the difference between contentment and armor? It seems like one should be light and the other heavy, but you can get used to weight, not even notice it after a while.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“From within the enforced aloneness of quarantine, I’m dreaming of freely chosen solitude.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“We’re told memories are best when they’re shared, but I’m saying sometimes it’s okay to gobble down the world like the most delicious midnight snack, all for you. I’m saying our memories are only ever really our own, anyway.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“There are people I love who I wish had experienced these things, too, but if I’d waited for them, I wouldn’t have done any of it.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“her polite tone at odds with the way she felt.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“Hard times had induced a stoic attitude toward life.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“I understood the truth that all traditions and orthodoxies—religious, philosophical, national, racial—amounted to little more than falsehoods that we must discard for an understanding of life in the moment.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“We were aligned. A nation of two. Her allegiances were to me. People often remarked how we looked alike, how we argued like husband and wife.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“You beat back the day’s sorrow with cleanliness.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“Why did the small deals all feel like big deals to me?”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“I wanted to be someone different, someone who had nothing. That sounded like freedom.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“What neither of us said: I’d been alone for years.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“Aloneness was a posture I was adopting, a crouch I was dropping into.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“I walked an increasing number of miles per day. I was flagellating myself, circling the town like an anchorite. At the time I thought I was practicing good health. At the time I didn’t see I was seeking ways to manipulate my body, and the hours my body moved through, as a way to prevent myself from looking at the chaos.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“Staring at the Devil card, I decided I was addicted to negative thoughts and self-hatred.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

“Each day I went into the study and produced a thousand words, but there was something wrong with them, because there was something wrong with me.”
― Natalie Eve Garrett, The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone