Anneli Rufus Quotes

#1. We do not require company. In varying degrees, it bores us, drains us, makes our eyes glaze over. Overcomes us like a steamroller. Of course, the rest of the world doesn't understand.

Anneli Rufus

#2. Writing is done alone. People do not talk about the things they do alone.

Anneli Rufus

#3. Loners live among the mob, so the mob mistakes us for its own, presuming and assuming. When the mob gets too close, the truth is revealed. Running or walking away, chased or free, any which way, we tell the mob in effect I don't need you.

Anneli Rufus

#4. The loner who looks fabulous is one of the most vulnerable loners of all.

Anneli Rufus

#5. Loners can play well with others-the right others,

Anneli Rufus

#6. Some of us have spent our whole lives committing suicide. And some of us survived.

Anneli Rufus

#7. Yet introverts and loners are not one and the same thing.

Anneli Rufus

#8. And yet what has been learned can be unlearned.

Anneli Rufus

#9. After what others would call a fun day out together, we feel as if we have been at the Red Cross, donating blood.

Anneli Rufus

#10. To this day, I have a very unhealthy relationship with food. I have an eating disorder; not in that I am anorexic or bulimic - I'm not - but in the sense that I feel extremely guilty every time I eat anything that isn't water. Of course I have body issues.

Anneli Rufus

#11. Alone, we are alive.

Anneli Rufus

#12. What did they call you that you weren't? What did they never say about you that you were?

Anneli Rufus

#13. Generalization is impossible. It is an insult.

Anneli Rufus

#14. People say the desert is desolate. Yet for me it's very much alive, full of surprises. As soon as I see those wide-open spaces, I can breathe,

Anneli Rufus

#15. America trembles in fear of loners, yet Charles Manson is a social butterfly.

Anneli Rufus

#16. We care. We feel. We think. We do not always miss the absent one. We cannot always come when called. Being friends with a loner requires patience and the wisdom that distance does not mean dislike.

Anneli Rufus

#17. NONLONERS BORROW A term from Jung and call us introverts. They think it makes them sound intelligent to say so.

Anneli Rufus

#18. Not that I was incapable of friendship. 'Don't be shy', the teachers coaxed. I was not shy, only extremely choosy. And Denise shone like a diamond. If you had to ask me to define paradise, I would have said a desert island which Denise could visit, on a boat.

Anneli Rufus

#19. They say isolation drives you crazy. Sure it does-when you can't get enough of it.

Anneli Rufus

#20. Is socializing all that great? Riots are socializing. Arguably, more damage is done and time wasted in company with others than alone.

Anneli Rufus

#21. The whole world is a personality cult.

Anneli Rufus

#22. We believe that whatever feels at first like joy is not. Or is, but will not last. Or should not last. We feel so sure of this that we will undermine our own inklings of joy, blunting the pain we think awaits.

Anneli Rufus