Under thy great sky in solitude and silence, with humble heart shall I stand before thee face

to face. Rabindranath Tagore THAT crazed girl improvising her music. Her poetry, dancing upon the shore, Heroically lost, heroically found. Yeats

Bluebird
there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you. there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks never know that he's in there. there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay down, do you want to mess me up? you want to screw up the works? you want to blow my book sales in Europe? there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad. then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it's nice enough to make a man weep, but I don't

weep, do you?

Charles Bukowski
The writer's curse is that even in solitude, no matter its duration, he never grows lonely or bored. I need nothing. I seek nothing. I desire nothing. Milarepa

Put worldly concerns behind you. Enter retreat with the sincere intention to attain unsurpassable great enlightenment. -From Jamgon Kongtruls Retreat Manual

Nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than his own soul. Marcus Aurelius the famous cubist artist, Pablo Picasso once said:Without great solitude no serious work is possible. Writers, photographers, painters, film makers have commented on solitude through their art.
too long in the company of others and it feels that my souls oxygen supply has been siphoned off.
If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company. Jean-Paul Sartre The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude. Aldous Huxley There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more George Gordon Byron I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. Henry David Thoreau In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion." Albert Camus We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being. Hermann Hesse

I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me. Charles Bukowski, Factotum Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god. Aristotle I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man. Kafka My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people. Patricia Highsmith In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us. Henri J.M. Nouwen Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart. Charles Dickens Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. Lao Tzu