There is no one around and I can really breathe

Letters of solitude

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On World Introvert Day last year, I sent out a newsletter that struck a chord with almost all of you—a quiet celebration of solitude, told through the words of those who knew that to be alone is not to be lacking, but to be full in a different way. In fact, of all the themes that surface in the letters I share—grief, love, anger, joy—none provoke a greater response than those that speak of solitude and introversion.

Well, yesterday was National Solitude Day, so here we are again. A new collection. Letters from people who felt the need to retreat, to protect the self, to sit with the silence. Some wrote from peace, some from exhaustion—but all found something vital in the quiet.

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Solitude sharpens and refines one’s taste for company, and just so much company renews the taste for solitude.

Amy Clampitt
Letter to her brother, Phillip
3rd February 1955

—Love, Amy: The Selected Letters of Amy Clampitt

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Both your cards reached me but I lacked the strength to answer. Not answering also has the effect of creating a silence about one, and my dearest wish would be to sink into that silence and never emerge from it. How I need solitude and how soiled I feel by every conversation.

Franz Kafka
Letter to Max Brod
28th September 1913

—Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors

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I am having my few great days of the year when there is no one around and I can really breathe — I don’t know why people disturb me so much — They make me feel like a hobbled horse.

Georgia O’Keeffe
Letter to Sherwood Anderson
11th June 1924

—Georgia O’Keeffe: Art and Letters

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It’s wonderful being alone... I wish sometimes I could bolt the door and live in here for days and days and not get disturbed by all the outside world of people.

Dora Carrington
Letter to Mark Gertler
1916

—Carrington’s Letters: Her Art, Her Loves, Her Friendships

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There is nothing quite so pleasurable as doing nothing at all and being aware of that. Pace is a must. The divine secret. One needs solitude, solitude, solitude. Being alone within 4 walls is immortality upon the earth.

Charles Bukowski
Letter to William Packard
18th May 1991

—Reach for the Sun: Vol.3

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I simply adore being alone — I find it a consuming thirst — and when that thirst is slaked, then I am happy.

May Sarton
Letter to Margaret Hawlery
9th August 1942

—May Sarton: Among the Usual Days

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I love solitude, but I prize it most when plenty of company is available.

Saul Bellow
Letter to Albert Glotzer
19th April 1996

—Saul Bellow: Letters

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Photo by Getty

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Happiness, tranquillity, beatitude—it’s to be alone, bearing up in solitude, to have no need of anything or anyone, and for your friends to sway like blue shadows in the boundless snow-covered steppe of your mind! Suddenly I feel like opening the window and screeching like a hawk, so great is my happiness.

Nikos Kazantzakis
Letter to Harilaos Stefanidis
23rd January 1929

—The Selected Letters of Nikos Kazantzakis

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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

—The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Vol.1

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I spend many evenings at home, & long lonely weekends too when I walk up & down my long & spacious attic & brew tea at hourly intervals & write & read poetry & stand at the window watching the trains go by, & then go & walk round St James’s Park & come home for more tea. All this is good, & I feel more life in me after every hour of being alone.

Iris Murdoch
Letter to David Hicks
8th March 1945

—Iris Murdoch, A Writer at War: Letters and Diaries, 1939-1945

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To be alone, and to be still, is always one of the greatest blessings. The more one sees of people, the more one feels it isn’t worth while. Better sit quite still in one’s own room, and possess one’s own soul.

D. H. Lawrence
Letter to Mary Cannan
31st August 1922

—The Letters of D. H. Lawrence

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I’m in the theatre so much, among so many people that it’s giving me a Garbo complex¹ and I just have to be alone. And I have been all the weekend and loved it. I left immediately after lunch, went for a long walk alone with the dog. Came in, washed my hair and since have just gloated over the silence and solitude.

Joyce Grenfell
Letter to her mother
29th October 1939

—Darling Ma: Letters to Her Mother, 1932-44

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I can remember how I suffered the most amazing embarrassment as a young person when I had secured an hour of solitude in my room by explaining, in response to the curiosity that is typical of family life, why I needed this hour and what I intended to do with it: this was enough to make the hard-won solitude worthless from the start as if it had been sold in advance. The tone that had settled on this hour thwarted its innocence, claimed it and made it infertile and empty, and even before I had set foot in my room my treason had already arrived there and filled it to each corner with depletion, obviousness, and desolation.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Letter to Countess M.
2nd December 1921

—Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1910–1926

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To be alone in the house is now my greatest pleasure. Even a mouse annoys me.

Virginia Woolf
Letter to her sister, Vanessa
2nd November 1930

—The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Volume 4

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PREVIOUSLY…

1. A reference to Greta Garbo, known for her desire for privacy and her famous line, “I want to be alone.” [In the comments, James notes that Garbo later clarified: "I never said I wanted to be alone, I said I wanted to be let alone. There is a world of difference."]