Anneli Rufus Quotes

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

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

Written works do not produce fast reactions as pictures and sculptures and music do. it takes no effort to see or hear. but to read - to grasp what the writer has done - requires commitment. engagement. as is the case with most art, the relationship between the maker and the audience is remote in time and space. the writer is nowhere to be seen when the reader takes up the book, or even dead. but most often, books go unread ... thus the writer, knowing this as writers do, is even more alone ... yet writers write. and knowing what they know makes their isolation almost a sacrament.

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

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

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

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.

Generalization is impossible. It is an insult.

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

Socializing is as exhausting as giving blood. People assume we loners are misanthropes, just sitting thinking, 'Oh, people are such a bunch of assholes,' but it's really not like that. We just have a smaller tolerance for what it takes to be with others. It means having to perform. I get so tired of communicating.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

And as experienced as I am, it still summons an act of bravery from me, and I like that. I like the idea of setting an example - proving that it is acceptable to be alone in a public place where everyone else is in groups, and to just be sitting there eating, not having to be engrossed in anything else.

We can change our brains, but it takes time and diligence, because the human brain has a built-in "negativity bias" whereby it stores and learns from negative experiences far more readily and lastingly than it stores and learns from positive ones. This is a natural survival strategy by which the body records danger signs for future reference. It is far more useful for an evolving creature to remember Hungry lions bite than to remember Flowers are pretty. Thus we are neurologically wired to remember more vividly and lastingly a bad experience - say, a public scolding - than to remember a good experience - say, hitting a home run - that occurred on the same day, even if both experiences carried exactly the same emotional intensity for us at the time.

Loners can play well with others-the right others,

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.