My father’s very public life as Famous Amos was the opposite of that of his ex-wife, my mother Shirley, who was fighting a very private, solitary battle with mental illness.
Popular music is one endless love song that, I suspect, the basically solitary Ella Fitzgerald approached much as the basically solitary Marianne Moore approached poetry: reading it with a certain contempt for it, Moore said, you could find a place in it for the genuine.
There’s a part of me that wishes I’d never said one single solitary word on any subject publicly. Then I could have been the tortured poet, and there’s so much mileage in that. But it’s too late to stop now.
I feel, in my live shows, I can be as dynamic as I want. It’s my comfort zone. When I get in the studio, it’s more of a solitary experience, which can be good creatively.
Photography is usually viewed as a solitary activity, but the truth of the matter is that people love to shoot together, compare notes, and just have fun with photography.
To some extent, all authors are a little schizophrenic. We lead most of our lives in solitary confinement, living and breathing the books that we’re writing.
Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.
The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.
We are, first of all, not solitary creatures and second of all, we are deeply embedded in the lives of others. It’s very easy to forget that and to engage in an atomistic fallacy – where we think that all we have to do is study the individual components of a system in order to understand the system.
I saw what was wonderful about human companionship. Before that, I was quite content to be alone, to be a solitary wandering person, and I thought I always would be. Love changed that.
A solitary laugh is often a laugh of superiority.
During one period while I was in solitary, I memorized the names of all 335 of the men who were then prisoners of war in North Vietnam. I can still remember them.
The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision. As long as we have books, we are not alone.
Writing is such a solitary existence, and I can only do it late at night.
The wailing owl Screams solitary to the mournful moon.
We are winning millions to Christ, one soul at a time. Every single, solitary soul is precious.
Well, it’s true that I’ve never been solitary, although I spend a lot of time alone. I’ve never felt lonely or been shy.
Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.
Peter Sellers was a solitary character, always preferring to hide behind a mask, and consequently, you never really got to know the real Sellers.
When I sing, it’s the most solitary state: just me, and the microphone, and the holy spirit. It’s not about notes or scales, it’s all about emotion.
Normally, with stand-up, it’s quite solitary, you write the material on your own, you perform it on your own, it’s all very much on you. Your own thoughts. You have to sort of modulate your own performance.
Dance music tends to be a solitary affair.
Well, I’m a runner, and I have to run with Secret Service – even though they can run twice as fast. It took me a while to get used to running with them, because I love the solitary aspect of it. So I have two rules. First, I can’t hear their feet. And second, I can’t see their shadows.
Book collecting is a largely solitary, mostly male, and completely absorbing activity.
Also, painting and animation are really solitary pursuits, so the collaborative aspects of music making and acting are pretty welcome sometimes.
The impact of solitary confinement can have a devastating consequence to the psychology of the people who are affected.
Through every struggle that I have been confronted with and have been subjected to – solitary confinement, long legal battles, and physically transitioning to the woman I have always been – I manage not only to survive, but to grow, learn, mature, and thrive as a better, more confident person.
I was quite solitary for ‘Hitman.’ I was quite apart. He struck me as a very sad individual. There was a mournful quality there.
I have always written about characters who fall somewhere in the spectrum between solitary and totally alienated.
I really like the collaboration of doing movies and television. But I like the sort of solitary work of doing music.
No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, and the wisdom of cookbook writers.
To me there is no more depressing sight than a five-year-old staring at a screen, unsmiling, mouse in hand. Besides whatever dreadful things this prolonged exposure to screens is doing to their brains, computer games tend to be solitary affairs, and produce little laughter.
The pushy showbiz kid thing was always the performance, not the person. I’m very solitary. I don’t like socialising.
I used to live a very social life and never spend much solitary time looking at birds or reading.
At 10, I heard Neil Diamond’s ‘Solitary Man’ and it moved me so deeply I stood, frozen in place during school recess, feeling such empathy for the narrator in Diamond’s masterpiece that my heart was smashed.
My mother had been a solitary chef. It was her recreation and her escape.
It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.
I’m perceived to be this solitary character, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Writing is a solitary profession; you are really alone when you write. Then the emotions become well shaped and distinct. But their transition into words must be done deliberately and with rigid artistry.
The virtues, like the Muses, are always seen in groups. A good principle was never found solitary in any breast.
Romney Marsh remains one of the last great wildernesses of south-east England. Flat as a desert, and at times just as daunting, it is an odd, occasionally eerie wetland straddling the coastal borders of Kent and Sussex, rich in birds, local folklore and solitary medieval churches.
Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.
Bradley Manning has been imprisoned without charge, under torture, which is what solitary confinement is.
Some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles.
It’s an interesting combination: Having a great fear of being alone, and having a desperate need for solitude and the solitary experience. That’s always been a tug of war for me.
‘The Creative Habit’ is basically about how you work alone, how you survive as a solitary artist. ‘The Collaborative Habit’ is obviously about surviving with other people.
Me, you could stick me in solitary confinement for 100 years and I’d be fine.
A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man.
There’s something about the water – that solitary kind of peaceful feeling. You’re on Earth but not quite.
For me, writing and creating music can be quite a solitary thing.
I will say that my days are spent solitary and somewhat lost in thought, and every single time I inadvertently wear my shirt inside out in public, I bump into my sister-in-law at the grocery store.
We were now arrived at the close of our solitary journeyings along the St. Joseph’s trail.
Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.
The free sharing and teaching of open source is incompatible with the notion of the solitary genius.
In this country, don’t forget, a habit is no damn private hell. There’s no solitary confinement outside of jail. A habit is hell for those you love. And in this country it’s the worst kind of hell for those who love you.
We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.
Writing can be a very solitary profession, and when deadlines are looming, it’s tempting to glue myself to my desk, but I try to make sure I get out a few times a month with friends just so I don’t forget what it means to be social.
There are so many different elements to surfing. Small waves, big waves, long boards, short boards. This makes it a sport you can share with people. It’s not just a solitary thing – it’s become a family thing, too. It’s about exercising and passing something on from father to son, and from mother to daughter.
Lots of creativity is and should be solitary.
I love getting out the house because writing is such a solitary business that even being at the library makes me feel part of the world.
Being married and having a child was not something I wanted, and I knew that at a very young age. I tend to be more solitary, and I’m truly a free spirit.
