Ramya Reddy

“A lonely, quiet person has observations and experiences that are at once both more indistinct and more penetrating than those of one more gregarious; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. . . . Loneliness fosters that which is original, daringly and bewilderingly beautiful, poetic. But loneliness also fosters that which is perverse, incongruous, absurd, forbidden.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice

“I come here for the solitude. I come to soak myself in memories before they evaporate, before they float so far from my memory that I can't catch them.”
― Brenda Sutton Rose

“I went up on the hill and walked about until twilight had deepened into an autumn night with a benediction of starry quietude over it. I was alone but not lonely. I was a queen in halls of fancy.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

“Mountains exceed our command.
They slip our grip.
And there is no glory for those who are left behind.
Mountains are so much
more than a challenge...
Or an adversary to be overcome.
For mountains humble the human instinct.
And reveal our insignificance.
They live in deep time. In a way that we do not.
Behind and beyond the
mountains stretch
eons too fast for
us to comprehend.
They were here long before we were even dreamed of.
They watched us arrive.
They will watch us leave.
Born of fire.
Born of force.
Mountains move.
Over epochs they rise and fall.
This is the symphony of the Earth.
A rhythm of uplift and
erosion that makes
not waves of water...
But waves of stone.
And from these waves of stone flows life.”
― Robert Macfarlane