It is just dawn, daylight: that gray and lonely suspension filled with the peaceful and tentative waking of birds. The air, inbreathed, is like spring water. He breathes deep and slow, feeling with each breath himself diffuse in the natural grayness,...
Your arms ache to hold someone -- you move in slow motion from one hug to the next so you won't jostle the warm feeling off your shoulders before the next hug comes your way. Your heart feels hollow -- that emptiness screams like an addiction to be f...
The first time someone I loved left me behind...I didn't know how my family would balance. We had been such a sturdy little end table, four solid legs. I was sure we would now be off-kilter, always unstable. Until one day I looked more closely, and r...
Turn around, and the people you thought you knew might change. Your little boy might now live half a world away. Your beautiful daughter might be sneaking out at night. Your ex-husband might by dying by degrees. This is the reason that dancers learn,...
The book was in her lap; she had read no further. The power to change one’s life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that live in river water and enter the bodies of swimmers. She was exci...
He crosses the front room, which he calls his study, and comes down the staircase. The stairs turn a corner; they are narrow and steep. You can touch both handrails with your elbows, and you have to bend your head, even if, like George, you are only ...
Up the still, glistening beaches, Up the creeks we will hie, Over banks of bright seaweed The ebb-tide leaves dry. We will gaze, from the sand-hills, At the white, sleeping town; At the church on the hill-side— And then come back down. Singing: "Th...
Today, Aaron decided, he would begin to grieve in earnest. He would walk the lonely beach, mocked by gulls, uncaring, his every step a stately rebuke to the malign forces that had blighted his fate. His was the tragedy of a man who couldn't have his ...
Now, remember: they're not for eating, but for listening, because you'll often be hungry for sounds as well as food. Here are street noises at night, train whistles from a long way off, dry leaves burning, busy department stores, crunching toast, cre...
Sales is a solo endeavor, a cold and lonely venture. Or it can be viewed in that aloof manner. It can also be viewed as something warm and symbiotic, and I think that’s what all the best salespeople have in common. They all choose to look at sales ...
How many times have I gone back to the border of memory and peered into the darkness beyond? But it is not only memories that hover on the border. There are all sorts of phantasmagoria that inhabit that realm. The nightmares of a lonely child. Fairy ...
Such a profound occurrence, when the priorities of those in our lives shine so brightly a path away from who we once thought they were. This light sears insights onto us and helps us along our way. I wonder at times if my old friend hope is my only. ...
The person whom you really, really love may not be here anymore. And you might be feeling lonely, but, there are people in this world who really, really love you, so shouldn't that equal it all out? So, please don't ever think that you're alone. I'll...
Every time the wind blows I think of her. I wonder if I could generate electricity off my yearning. Maybe a mind wind farm of some kind. Hopefully I could provide enough power for all the lonely people in my bathtub to stay warm.
If we go looking for a friend, we’ll find many locked doors. It can be a lonely and often fruitless search. Sometimes it feels like no matter how hard we knock there’s not a single person to be found for true friendship. But... when we go out to ...
Too bad I didn't know you back then, I would have come and rescued you." Like he was Prince Charming or something. Which he is, in a way, because he rescued me from the simple, uncomplicated life I thought I liked until I realized how much I was miss...
When I look back at myself at age twenty, what I remember most is being alone and lonely. I had no girlfriend to warm my body or my soul, no friends I could open up to. No clue what I should do every day, no vision for the future. For the most part, ...
That’s the great thing about hope—no matter your past, no matter your mistakes, hope is the constant force in your heart driving you forward. You fall down. You cry about it for a little while. And then you stand up again. You push forward. You n...
Listen, I'll share some of the wisdom I learned over the years. When you near the end of your life... when you're a lonely old man... you start realizing what your accomplishments are really worth. The most brilliant clue I ever deciphered, the milli...
The more we speak of solitude, the clearer it becomes that at the bottom it is not something one can choose to take or leave. We are lonely. One can deceive oneself about it and act as if it were not so. That is all. But it is so much better to see t...
There is something magical to me about literature and fiction and I think it can do things not only that pop culture cannot do but that are urgent now: one is that by creating a character in a work of fiction you can allow a reader to leap over the w...
