Solitude quotes for people who are not actually lonely

Solitude has a bad reputation it did not earn. We tend to file time alone under things that happen to us — a cancelled plan, a quiet Sunday nobody wanted — rather than something a person can choose on purpose. The writers below chose it, and they wrote about it as a resource rather than a shortage.

The distinction they keep returning to is between solitude and loneliness. Loneliness is the absence of people you want. Solitude is the presence of yourself without interruption. One is a subtraction; the other is a room you walk into. Most of us get plenty of the first kind of alone — commutes, waiting rooms, evenings with a phone — and almost none of the second, because we fill the gaps before they open.

These lines are short for a reason. A page of quotations about being alone is a strange object: it fills the same space it is asking you to clear. So take one and close the tab. The idea only works if you actually stop reading.