Loners Quotes

“Friends are a strange, volatile, contradictory, yet sticky phenomenon. They are made, crafted, shaped, molded, created by focused effort and intent. And yet, true friendship, once recognized, in its essence is effortless.

Best friends are formed by time.

Everyone is someone's friend, even when they think they are all alone.

If the friendship is not working, your heart will know. It's when you start being less than perfectly honest and perfectly earnest in your dealings. And it's when the things you do together no longer feel right.

However, sometimes it takes more effort to make it work after all.

Stick around long enough to become someone's best friend.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“You only grow when you are alone.”
― Paul Newman

“She is a loner, too bright for the slutty girls and too savage for the bright girls, haunting the edges and corners of the school like a sullen disillusioned ghost”
― Eleanor Catton, The Rehearsal

“We do not require company. In varying degrees, it bores us, drains us, makes our eyes glaze over. Overcomes us like a steamroller. Of course, the rest of the world doesn't understand.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

“She's the first person to smile at me today.
The first to make me feel wanted.
Understood.
I blink back tears.
It's unknown how many students' lives
librarians have saved
by welcoming loners at lunch.”
― Lisa Fipps, Starfish

“The thought that the Mayan culture managed to calculate the Earth’s
passing through the plane of the Milky Way galaxy never failed to fascinate
Chuck. It was December of 2012 that had marked the end of the
Mayan calendar and also saw the Earth pass through that plane, the winter
equinox of 2012, to be precise. Of course, that exact date had been
disproved. The Mayans hadn’t accounted for leap year.
How could an ancient culture have calculated such a complex 26,000
year celestial cycle yet not figure in leap year? Yet another puzzle. Maybe
it was this rare event that accounted for the appearance of his comet.
His comet. Maybe he could be the one to officially make the discovery.”
― Jody Summers, The Mayan Legacy

“If it's true what is said, that only the wise discover the wise, then it must also be true that the lone wolf symbolizes either the biggest fool on the planet or the biggest Einstein on the planet.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“I should have written you a letter, it was too late to make the deaths of my brothers an excuse. Since they died, I wrote a book; why not a letter? A mysterious but truthful answer is that while I can gear myself up to do a novel, letters, real-life communications, are too much for me. I used to rattle them off easily enough; why is the challenge of writing to friends and acquaintances too much for me now? Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key--as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away.”
― Saul Bellow

“The lonesome and desperate kids out there, that pain will translate to magic perhaps.”
― Tenacious D

“Those who understand the true nature of humanity are always loners”
― Dean Cavanagh

“Strong creatures don't form herds.
Have they never heard of a lone wolf?
Cats are cute, and wolves are cool.
So in essence, loners are cute and cool.”
― Wataru Watari, やはり俺の青春ラブコメはまちがっている。2

“And there are loners in rural communities who, at the equinox, are said to don new garments and stroll down to the cities, where great beasts await them, fat and docile.”
― Louis Aragon

“They say isolation drives you crazy. Sure it does - when you can't get enough of it.”
― Anneli Rufus

“To the loner, loneliness is a treasure that cannot be traded, even for the nicest of companies.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Book of Maxims, Poems and Anecdotes

“I grew up a dreamer, lonely, one foot on the earth, the other on the moon.”
― Philippe Lechermeier, The Secret Lives of Princesses

“Scan the personal ads, and you will find nonloners for whom reaching out is the natural impulse. At parties, spy the loner lurking in the kitchen pretending to look for ice or napkins, or hovering by the door eager to leave. The loner at the party tries to appear occupied, peering at sham absorption at the liquid in her wineglass, or the Erte poster next to his solitary post in a stiff chair no one else wants in the corner farthest from the sound system. Then again, sometimes it is he who mans the system, changing CDs and adjusting the volume with such busy efficiency that nobody would think to interrupt him. When the dancing starts, she freezes. Not a single tendon betrays the fact that she hears a beat. Not one thumb lifts. As couples rise and swirl and pound the floor, she vanishes. One way or another, she does.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

“Loners, if you can catch them, are well worth the trouble. Not dulled by excess human contact, not blase or focused on your crotch while jabbering about themselves, loners are curious, vigilant, full of surprises. They do not cling. Separate wherever they go, awake or asleep, they shimmer with the iridescence of things seldom seen. The pearl, the swallow's egg, the lost doubloon, the jewel in the lotus, membrane. You don't need to be told this. You know.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

“Aggressive women sometimes "go after the shy and introverted guys," picking them as prime partners precisely because such guys, whom Avila calls "more tender and good-hearted" than standard-issue men, seem easier to manipulate.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

“Along with whatever other hardships work brings-difficulty, danger, dullness, unfair pay- loners who labor any way besides alone endure one more. It is a hardship nonloners don't even know exists, cannot conceive of.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

“As artists know, the creative process is consummately singular, It is a sojourn whose signposts are legible only to him: a trip whose personal nature is its point.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

“Artists hear what no one else hears. They see what no one else sees. They say what no one else says. They must. And to do this, they yield traffic in the slippery slope of their own souls. They bring to earth the wrack and lode of depths that only they can reach and still come back alive.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

“Inspiration is a flash. A momentary flicker that- if the would-be recipient is mired in mindless chatter- might easily die unseen. It cannot be repeated, duplicated, slowed down, cached for viewing at some more convenient time. The mind awaiting inspiration must be primed, ever awake, aware. For this it is best off alone.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

“She is gifted, they say. She has the gift. A gift with hard labor attached. After inspiration must come the plunge down inner passages, the search which suffocates but liberates: the spelunking where no one could help even if you wanted them to. Instead, plucking souvenirs from those depths, you must keep asking yourself, in a tongue only you can speak, What next? But how? while shapes and colors swirl out of control. A gift, but a subpoena.

Which can take weeks to fill. Years. Your whole life.

Which requires initiative. Commitment. Loner values, loner aptitudes. Conviction that something so personal is worth doing no matter what.

”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

“Art breeds loners. Loners breed art.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

“The most horrifying thing about art is its honesty, the truth lashed to the mast. This, too, makes artists loners and loners artists. It is the tendency of the recipient to kill the messenger.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

“By sharing, by comparing notes, nonloners decide what is true.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

“We keep things to ourselves. The most profound things we keep the most to ourselves. We nurse jolts. Saying nothing. For loners, discussing the mystical deflates it like air escaping a balloon.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

“Spending a lot of time alone is like an accidental meditation. A casual mindfulness. We do not have to work at this, at observation or serenity. Any loner is halfway to Buddhism without knowing it.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

“Terror of extinction still haunts the major religions: an old habit, unlikely given their numbers.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto

“To a loner it hardly seems possible-not even plausible- that millions could agree on what God likes and dislikes and whether pork or beef is verboten. How, we muse, can millions nod in unison approving the validity of liturgy? How can the unseen move so many strangers in the exact same way? Those millions-nonloners, of course- would say it moves them alike because it is real. They would say the unanimity by which it moves them proves it is real. Loners cannot help but suspect something else afoot, something pedestrian. We know nonloners learn by imitation. We know they shore up their self-esteem through imitation, through securing a sense of belonging. Nonloners thrive on this, so why would it not tint their view of heaven? Among nonloners, religion fends off loneliness, one of their greatest fears, both within the soul and without.”
― Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto