Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures In The Art Of Being Alone Quotes

[of Nan Goldin] In an afterword to Ballad written in 2012, she declared: ‘I decided as a young girl I was going to leave a record of my life and experience that no one could rewrite or deny.

This is what's so terrifying about being lonely: the instinctive sense that it is literally repulsive, inhibiting contact at just the moment contact is most required.

Collapse, spread, merging, union: these things sound like the opposite of loneliness, and yet intimacy requires a solid sense of self to be successful and satisfying.

There are kinds of solitude that provide a respite from loneliness, a holiday if not a cure.

Why do you put yourself in unsafe places? Because something in you feels fundamentally devoid of worth.

What does it feel like to be lonely? It feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast.