“.....he was simply a man who had gone even further into loneliness than others - and that's a real exploit, by the way; where breaking records in loneliness is concerned, we're all champions in the field. ..........he continually repeats: "dogs are not enough anymore. People feel so damned lonely, they need company, they need something bigger, stronger, to lean on, something that can really stand up to it all. Dogs aren't enough; what we need is elephants.......”

“Literature "has always been the last refuge, in this world, for those who do not know where to lay their dreaming heads.”

“SOLIDAO, LONELINESS.What is it that we call loneliness. It can't simply be the absence of others, you can be alone and not lonely, and you can be among people and yet be lonely. So what is it? ... it isn't only that others are there, that they fill up the space next to us. But even when they celebrate us or give advice in a friendly conversation, clever, sensitive advice: even then we can be lonely. So loneliness is not something simply connected with the presence of others or with what they do. Then what? What on earth?”

“Physician Albert Scheweitzer said. " We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness." Professor Leo Buscaglia notes, "There seems to be accumulating evidence that there is actually an inborn need for this togetherness, this human interaction, this love. It seems that without these close ties with other human beings, a new born infant, for example, can regress developmentally, lose consciousness, fall into idiocy and die.”

“If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India!”

“You have each other, thought Isabel.But was that enough? Even when one was in love, it was not really enough just to have the other person - not if one needed stimulation. The company of just one person could be reassuring, could stave off loneliness, but would it be enough for three months?”

“Is it possible really to love other people? If I’m lonely and in pain, everyone outside me is potential relief—I need them. But can you really love what you need so badly? Isn’t a big part of love caring more about what the other person needs? How am I supposed to subordinate my own overwhelming need to somebody else’s needs that I can’t even feel directly? And yet if I can’t do this, I’m damned to loneliness, which I definitely don’t want … so I’m back at trying to overcome my selfishness for self-interested reasons.”