“Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around.”

“Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one's cow has exploded.”

“How many days have I spent alone with my cat… and when I say alone, I mean without a material being, for my cat is a mystical companion, a spirit.”

“I do not have the power - besides no one has the power in Germany - to control how many people will cross the border to Germany.”

“How you see me has nothing to do with me, it has everything to do with you.”

“Many people will find this book disrespectful. There is nothing amusing about being dead, they will say. Ah, but there is.”

“A human being is nothing but a story with skin around it.”

“He was as alone as he had ever been, frighteningly alone, in a borderless land of shaded forests and rocky, abyssal gorges. But that was all right. He didn’t much mind being alone. It was what happened when people were around that worried him.”

“Our language has wisely sensed these two sides of man’s being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.”

“All the people around Hester hate her and despise her and think she's a total freak. The kid's beyond human law and human consideration. How do you feel about yourself when every human being you hear and see and smell every day of your being thinks you're worse than garbage? Your conception of who you are has always, at least partially, depended on how the people around you behaved towards you… You don't know. How can you know anything? How can you know anything? You begin to go crazy.”