by Ivan Kramskoi (1837 - 1887)
Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others... and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse