Alone Bench Quotes & Sayings

What he then saw was like an apparition. She was seated in the middle of a bench all alone, or, at any rate, he could see no one, dazzled as he was by her eyes. — Gustave Flaubert

Most of the benches bore the names of benefactors - in memory of Mrs. Ruth Klein or whatever - but my mother's bench, the Rendezvous Point, alone of all the benches in that part of the park had been given by its anonymous donor a more mysterious and welcoming message: EVERYTHING OF POSSIBILITY. It had been Her Bench since before I was born; in her early days in the city, she had sat there with her library book on her afternoons off, going without lunch when she needed the price of a museum pass at MoMA or a movie ticket at the Paris Theatre. — Donna Tartt

There is no fact, no detail of our life too sordid for God's intervention. God has seen murder. God has seen rape. God has seen drug addiction's and alcoholism's utter degradation. God is available to us no matter what our circumstances. God can find us in a crack house. God can find us crumpled in a doorway or cowering on a park bench. We need only reach out to discover that God reaches back. We are led a step at a time even when we feel we are alone. Sometimes God talks to us through people. Sometimes God reaches us through circumstances or coincidence. God has a million ways to reach out to us, and when we are open to it, we begin to sense the touch of God coming to us from all directions. — Julia Cameron

When I'm by myself, I'm not threatening at all. I get many more invitations than I would if I were traveling with anyone else, especially with a man. But I'm rarely alone. I sit on a park bench and I'm not alone because I pick a park bench where somebody interesting is sitting. — Rita Gelman

The speech she made was done in the back, alone, like little shoes cobbled by an elf: spider is to web as weaver is to blank. That one was hers. She was proud of that. Also, blank is to heartache as forest is to bench. But — Lorrie Moore

The title of the poem is: Heimweh (Homesick). The pervasive feeling expressed is of utter desolation, of wrenching pain felt by a person, who longs for every stone, bench, house - everything that was home. She felt that this poem put into words her own extreme longing for what used to be home. Then the letter continues: Nettchen, how long will this go on? How do you bear it? I have been here less than three months and I imagine that I will surely go out of my mind. Especially, in these unspeakably bright and white nights that overflow with longing. Sing sometimes, late at night, when you are alone: Poljushka4. Perhaps you will understand my frame of mind. — Pearl Fichman

It is a sunny fall afternoon and I'm engaged in one of my favorite pastimes - picking chestnuts. I'm playing alone under the spreading, leafy, protective tree. My mother is sitting on a bench nearby, rocking the buggy in which my sister is asleep. The city, beyond the lacy wall of trees, is humming with gentle noises. The sun has just passed its highest point and is warming me with intense, oblique rays. I pick up a reddish brown chestnut, and suddenly, through its warm skin, I feel the beat as if of a heart. But the beat is also in everything around me, and everything pulsates and shimmers as if it were coursing with the blood of life. Stooping under the tree, I'm holding life in my hand, and I am in the center of a harmonious, vibrating transparency. For that moment, I know everything there is to know. I have stumbled into the very center of plenitude, and I hold myself still with fulfillment, before the knowledge of my knowledge escapes me. — Eva Hoffman

I was in a garden at the Rodin Museum. For a few minutes I was alone, sitting on a bench between two long hedges of roses. Pink roses. Suddenly I felt the most powerful feeling of peace, and I had the thought that death, if it means an absorption into a reality like the one that was before me, might be all right. — Irving Howe

If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery
isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is. — Charles Bukowski

When trouble comes no mother should have to plead guilty alone. The pediatricians, psychologists, therapists, goat herders, fathers, and peer groups should all be called to the bench as well ... — Mary Blakely

I didn't have any friends at school, didn't want any. I felt better being alone. I sat on a bench and watched the others play and they looked foolish to me. — Charles Bukowski

They just need to sit on a bench with someone else so they know they're not alone. I know this because it's what I need too. — Emily P. Freeman

Mary sat on a bench in the park. It was the middle of the night and she was alone and she felt at peace. She leaned back and looked upward. The sky was endless and expansive and the stars stretched on forever. It made her feel very small but it also made her feel very important. Of all of the things that might have ever had the chance to exist in the history of the universe, she had the privilege of being one of them. A living, thinking, feeling being, with the ability to control her own destiny.
As wondrous and expansive as stars and the entire universe were, none of them had this power. None of them had any control. And yet she felt humbled to be a part of it at all. It felt like a trade-off. In this life you could only be one or the other: wondrous and expansive or small and in control. — Olivia Fuller

Rope-skipping, hopscotch. That old woman in black who sat down next to me on my bench, on my rack of joy (a nymphet was groping under me for a lost marble), and asked if I had stomachache, the insolent hag. Ah, leave me alone in my pubescent park, in my mossy garden. Let them play around me forever. Never grow up. — Vladimir Nabokov

The two thought themselves alone. But all the while, one watched with the night-wide eyes of love. While they paced the pebbled paths between the silent flowers' spiked arrays, sage Thyme spied upon each pale sigh, peeping between bloom and leaf. And while they sat side by side and hand in hand on the stained stone bench beneath the spreading wisteria, Thyme watched unwinking from the midnight face of the mute sundial. And while they lay lazy on the soft grass, swearing the sweet oaths of love and longing, and whispering as they parted that though long lives might pass like a night and the New Sun sunder the centuries, yet never should they ever part, Thyme crept and cried, counting seconds that spilled with the sand from the hourglass, and scenting the soft breezes that cooled the child's burning cheek with his sad spice. The — Gene Wolfe

I like that Sarah Palin. She looks like the flight attendant who won't give you a second can of Pepsi ... She looks like the nurse who weighs you and then makes you sit alone in your underwear for 20 minutes ... She looks like a real estate agent whose picture you see on the bus stop bench ... She looks like the hygienist who makes you feel guilty about not flossing ... She looks like the relieved mom in a Tide commercial. — David Letterman

He crossed the stage, pushed the bench back and sat, hands resting on the keyboard cover. After a moment, he took off the cloth, and uncovered the keyboard. He rested his fingers on the keys, but didn't depress them, simply sitting there for a moment, in the dark and silent auditorium, and closed his eyes.
He belonged here. Not on a stage, but with a piano. It was the only place he felt alive. The groupies, the concerts, the strangely worshipful perks of fame, none of them made him feel complete like these moments alone did. — Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Tania, I was spellbound by you from the first moment I saw you. There I was, living my dissolute life, and war had just started. My entire base was in disarray, people were running around, closing accounts, taking money out, grabbing food out of stores, buying up the entire Gostiny Dvor, volunteering for the army, sending their kids to camp - " He broke off. "And in the middle of my chaos, there was you!" Alexander whispered passionately. "You were sitting alone on this bench, impossibly young, breathtakingly blonde and lovely, and you were eating ice cream with such abandon, such pleasure, such mystical delight that I could not believe my eyes. As if there were nothing else in the world on that summer Sunday. — Paullina Simons