One of the best things is being alone

For 'World Introvert Day'

Shaun Usher

Jan 02, 2024

470

Happy ‘World Introvert Day’ to all who celebrate (at home). The following snippets are especially for you.

I certainly prefer being alone; I shun people like poison; I simply don’t want them.

Sylvia Plath
Letter to Ted Hughes
7th October 1956

(From The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume 1)

After being so social... I don’t feel like myself at all. I’m exhausted all over but particularly the face, which I suppose comes from wearing a horrible fixed grin for so long.

Elizabeth Bishop
Letter to Carley Dawson
10th November 1948

(From One Art: Letters)

Tomorrow I shall go back to London, and there already awaits me a string of inevitable experiences—what is called “seeing people.” You don’t know what that means—it means one can’t get out of it.

Virginia Woolf
Letter to Gerald Brenan
4th October 1929

(From The Complete Collection)

One of the best things is being alone.

John Steinbeck
Letter to Bo Beskow
19th September 1948

(From Steinbeck: A Life in Letters)

Being under my own roof, and my personality not invaded by others makes a lot of difference in my outlook on life and everything. Oh, to be once more alone in a house!

Zora Neale Hurston
Letter to Jean Waterbury
6th March 1951

(From Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters)

A week’s solitude restores me to the sense that I am a person and not a rag-heap for other people to pick over.

Vita Sackville-West
Letter to Virginia Woolf
8th December 1925

(From Love Letters: Vita and Virginia)

I go scarcely anywhere.
Everything seems tiresome.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Letter to Maria Issayev
4th June 1855

(From The Complete Works)

We are to have a tiny party here tonight. I hate tiny parties—they force one into constant exertion.

Jane Austen
Letter to Cassandra Austen
21st May 1801

(From Jane Austen’s Letters)

I have reverted to solitude. I live in a house too large for me, with three cats; and when the telephone rings and it is a wrong number I feel a rush of thankfulness.

Sylvia Townsend Warner
Letter to David Garnett
2nd September 1970

(From Sylvia Townsend Warner: Letters)

My real problem is a more personal one—the need of being alone. I am not anti-social; I have a deep affection for my friends and family, feel deeply for suffering humanity (also for suffering animals!) but at times I have a desperate need to be absolutely alone.

Edward Weston
Letter to Ansel Adams
3rd December 1934

(From Ansel Adams: Letters)

Solitude is Heaven.

May Sarton
Letter to Bryher
31st July 1942

(From May Sarton: Selected Letters)

I am one of these strange fuckers who finds great pleasure in being alone.

Charles Bukowski
Letter to Gerald Locklin
8th August 1981

(From Reach for the Sun: Vol.3)

I don’t know what an introvert is but if that is what you are may all my children be them.

Ernest Hemingway
Letter to Isabel Godolphin
12th August 1928

(From Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917–1961)

(Both photos are from Getty.)

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