“She stays in the same spot, anchored by the profound, desperate loneliness of a bad relationship.”

“What is on the other side of any addiction? Something you are desperate to avoid. You stay addicted and you can't let go because letting go means falling back into what you are desperate to avoid… such as a feeling of being unsafe, isolation, lack of belonging, loneliness, emptiness.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

“There in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning.”

Toni Morrison book Sula

“Nothing stays the same, Gina, nothing works forever. If I don’t like it, that’s too bad. If you don’t like it, that’s still too bad.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

“The future is what matters — because one never reaches it, but always stays in the present — like the White Queen who had to run like the wind to remain in the same spot.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

“Loneliness, she thought, was craving for other people's company. But she did not know that loneliness can be an unnoticed cramping of the spirit for lack of companionship.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

“Now I know what loneliness is, I think. Momentary loneliness, anyway. It comes from a vague core of the self - - like a disease of the blood, dispersed throughout the body so that one cannot locate the matrix, the spot of contagion.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

“Thinking about her was the same as the hole you keep on feeling with your tongue after you lose a tooth. Time after time, my mind kept going to that empty spot, the spot where I felt like she should be.”

Kate DiCamillo book Because of Winn-Dixie

“But where pain was, healing could come; where loneliness was, new relationships could be formed; where rejection was, new love could be found. It was a moment. And moments changed. She would have to live through the moment to get to the next.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist