“Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you.”

“In its essence, any art that relies on words makes use of their ability to eat away — of their corrosive function — just as etching depends on the corrosive power of nitric acid.”

Yukio Mishima book Sun and Steel

“Loneliness is like starvation: you don't realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

“In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“Over time, loneliness gets inside you and doesn't go away.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

“You can walk away from your mistakes
You can turn your back on what you do
Just a little smile is all it takes
And you can have your cake and eat it too.
Loneliness will get to you somehow
But ev'rybody loves you now.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

“With the loneliness
of you mighty men,
with your mighty kiss
that might never, never end,
while, so far away,
in the seat of the West,
burns the fount
of the heat
of that loneliness.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

“Jesus man! You don't look for acid! Acid finds you when it thinks you're ready.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

“To be loved to madness--such was her great desire. Love was to her the one cordial which could drive away the eating loneliness of her days. And she seemed to long for the abstraction called passionate love more than for any particular lover.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

“Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.”

Ian Fleming book The Spy Who Loved Me