“It did not occur to me that absence of human companionship does not assure solitude. It may, on the contrary, plunge one into an environment compared with which New York or London would appear deserts. For we take memory and imagination with us. The seabirds that scream overhead or waddle along the margins of the surf; the grotesque forms of twisted cedars; the rustle of sea-grass in the wind; the interminable percussion of the breakers; the dead infinity of the sand itself - there can be no solitude, in the sense of freedom from disturbances of thought, in the presence of such things. They draw us back into the maelstrom. ("Absolute Evil")”

“There is a solitude of space,A solitude of sea,A solitude of death, but theseSociety shall be,Compared with that profounder site,That polar privacy,A Soul admitted to itself:Finite infinity.”

“We are given over to absolute solitude. No one can speak with us and no one can speak for us; we must take it upon ourselves, each of us must take it upon himself.”

“My solitude doesn’t depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.”

“Imagine all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine him on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and hearing a ring at the door-bell!”

“Strong winds buffet the sea oats and tall dune grasses, tossing sand and seabirds where it will, winding my sister's golden hair into sunlit spirals of silk until it becomes the only good memory I have of her -- the only memory I allowed myself to keep.”