12 Quotes by Olivia Laing about loneliness



  • Author Olivia Laing
  • Quote

    Loneliness, I began to realise, was a populated place. A city in itself. And when one inhabits a city, even a city as rigorously and logically constructed as Manhattan, one starts by getting lost.

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  • Author Olivia Laing
  • Quote

    Collapse, spread, merging, union: these things sound like the opposite of loneliness, and yet intimacy requires a solid sense of self to be successful and satisfying.

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  • Author Olivia Laing
  • Quote

    I felt like I was in danger of vanishing, though at the same time the feelings I had were so raw and overwhelming that I often wished I could find a way of losing myself altogether, perhaps for a few months, until the intensity diminished.

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  • Author Olivia Laing
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    Manhattan across the water, the glittering towers. I was working, but I didn't have anything like enough to do, and the bad times came in the evenings, when I came back to my room, sat on the couch and watched the world outside me going through on glass a lightbulb at a time.

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  • Author Olivia Laing
  • Quote

    Если к вам вообще не прикасаются, речь - сама тесная связь, какую вообще можно установить с другим человеком.

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  • Author Olivia Laing
  • Quote

    Why do you put yourself in unsafe places? Because something in you feels fundamentally devoid of worth.

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  • Author Olivia Laing
  • Quote

    This is what's so terrifying about being lonely: the instinctive sense that it is literally repulsive, inhibiting contact at just the moment contact is most required.

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