Quotes about Isolation

In the snowstorm you came close to wild animals and they were not afraid. They travelled across country not knowing where they were and the deer stood sometimes in the lee of the cabin. In a snowstorm you rode up to a moose and he mistook your horse for another moose and trotted forward to meet you. In a snowstorm it always seemed, for a time, as though there were no enemies.

And just then it occurred to him that he was going to die. It came with a rush; not as a rush of water nor of wind; but of a sudden, evil-smelling emptiness and the odd thing was that the hyena slipped lightly along the edge of it.

The old man drank his coffee slowly. It was all he would have all day and he knew that he should take it. For a long time now eating had bored him and he never carried a lunch.

The three of us sat at the table, and it seemed as though about six people were missing.

I said, 'Who killed him?' and he said 'I don't know who killed him, but he's dead all right,' and it was dark and there was water standing in the street and no lights or windows broke and boats all up in the town and trees blown down and everything all blown and I got a skiff and went out and found my boat where I had her inside Mango Key and she was right only she was full of water.

It is easy when you are beaten, he thought. I never knew how easy it was. And what beat you, he thought. "Nothing," he said aloud. "I went out too far.

But the world they were in was not the world he was in.

I drank a bottle of wine for company.

Once a week, I like to slip into a deep existential depression where I lose all my sense of oneness and self-worth.

When we're in production, it's 14 hours a day, and we couldn't be less involved in the world. My friends all hate me during that time because I can't see anyone. We say goodbye to everything.

I don't even have voice mail or answering machines anymore. I hate the phone, and I don't want to call anybody back. If I go to hell, it will be a small closet with a telephone in it, and I will be doomed and destined for eternity to return phone calls.

Television has been the single greatest shaper of emptiness.