“Have you ever been lonely? No, neither have I. Solitary, yes. Alone, certainly. But lonely means minding about being on your own. I've never minded about it.”

“Lonely's like any other organism; competitive and resourceful in the struggle to perpetuate itself.”

“Shakespeare drew a map of the human mind as clearly as Newton mapped the heavens. Wht is one considered science and the other fir only to be mocked with jokes about pretty girls and drury lane?”

“One of the hardest things about being alive is being with other people.”

“From an early age she had developed the art of being alone and generally preferred her own company to anyone else’s. She read books at enormous speed and judged them entirely on her ability to remove her from her material surroundings. In almost all the unhappiest days of her life she had been able to escape from her own inner world by living temporarily in someone else’s, and on the two or three occasions that she had been too upset to concentrate she had been desolate.”

“I'd become more adept at being with other people; I'd lowered my expectations of them and learned to let my mind drift into neutral when they spoke.”

“That night Christine Hartmann went to bed with a book she had taken from among the many that lay strewn around the Manor. From an early age she had developed the art of being alone and generally preferred her own company to anyone else's. She read books at enormous speed and judged them entirely on their ability to remove her from her material surroundings. In almost all the unhappiest days of her life she had been able to escape from her own inner world by living temporarily in someone else's, and on the two or three occasions that she had been too upset to concentrate she had been desolate.”