“her spirits wanted the solitude and silence which only numbers could give.”

“I do not want to be admired. I want to give, to be given, and solitude in which to unfold my possessions.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

“What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

“If anything might hurt her, silence would; and I wanted to hurt her.”

John Fowles book The Magus

“[S]he leans into this guy and rocks her head like I’m making this music for her, when if I could, I would take it all away and give her as much silence as she’s given me pain.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

“In solitude she lived,
And in solitude built her nest;
And in solitude, alone
Hath the Beloved guided her,
In solitude also wounded with love. ~ 35”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

“The very pure spirit does not bother about the regard of others or human respect, but communes inwardly with God, alone and in solitude as to all forms, and with delightful tranquility, for the knowledge of God is received in divine silence.”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

“but he only found her in the image that saturated his private and terrible solitude.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

“The solitude of writing is a solitude without which writing could not be produced, or would crumble, drained bloodless by the search for something else to write.”

Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) French writer and film director

“For most of us, for almost all of us, truth can be attained, if at all, only in silence. It is in silence that the human spirit touches the divine.”

Iris Murdoch book Under the Net