Alone In The Road Quotes & Sayings

Down the road a bit, I would like to write a couple of stand-alone adult novels, especially in the horror genre. I've got lots of things up my sleeve. — James Dashner

We climbed the height by the zigzag path And wondered why - until We understood it was made zigzag To break the force of the hill. A road straight up would prove too steep For the traveler's feet to tread; The thought was kind in its wise design Of a zigzag path instead. It is often so in our daily life; We fail to understand That the twisting way our feet must tread By love alone was planned. Then murmur not at the winding way, It is our Father's will To lead us Home by the zigzag path, To break the force of the hill. ANONYMOUS — Lettie B. Cowman

More than likely you'll do well enough alone by the engines of your own fate until you either hit a few really nasty bumps in the road or grow old enough to realize that there may be a diamond or two in what you thought was your old man's bucket. — Carew Papritz

Just coming to terms with the fact that I got to play April Wheeler [Revolutionary Road] and Hanna Schmitz [The Reader] in one year, let alone in my lifetime. I'm very, very aware of how rare that is as an opportunity for any one person. I can't tell you how much I've been able to take away from these experiences creatively. I really, really learned so much about acting, about myself ... all of those things. It's difficult to talk about the actor's process without sounding like an arrogant asshole but they really were very challenging. — Kate Winslet

For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire. — Helen Keller

Except for the sound of the rain, on the road, on the roofs, on the umbrella, there was absolute silence: only the dying moan of the sirens continued for a moment or two to vibrate within the ear. It seemed to Scobie later that this was the ultimate border he had reached in happiness: being in darkness, alone, with the rain falling, without love or pity. — Graham Greene

When the wind is right and the cloud is gone, you can see down this road as far as Darjeeling," I told her. "But it is a long and difficult road, full of perils, and if a traveller on foot were to look at the length of it, his spirit would be overcome and he would sit down and refuse to go any further. You must not look to the end of the road, Portia. Look only to the step in front of you. That you can do. Just one step. And you will not make the journey alone. — Deanna Raybourn

There Is A Place.

There is a place, I want to show you.
There is a place, just down the road.
There is a place, down by the river.
There is a place, that I call home...
There is a place, that I would play as a kid.
There is a place, that I would walk alone.
There is a place, and it's like a sad song.
There is a place, that is now long gone...
Here is a place, will you come see?
This is the place in my mind, I'd like to be.
Just open your mind, and think.
Is there a place, you would like to be? — Jerrel C. Thomas

I hear the wind call my name
The sound that leads me home again
It sparks up the fire - a flame that still burns
To you I'll always return

I know the road is long
But where you are is home
Wherever you stay-I'll find the way
I'll run like the river-I'll follow the sun
I'll fly like an eagle
To where I belong

I can't stand the distance
I can't dream alone
I can't wait to see you-yes I'm on my way home

Now I know it's true
My every road leads to you
And in the hour of darkness,
Your light gets me through

You run like the river-you shine like the sun
Yeah
You fly like an eagle-yeah you are the one
I seen every sunset and with all that I've learned
Oh, it's to you, I will always, always, return — Bryan Adams

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received - hatred. The great creators - the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors - stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won. — Ayn Rand

Trudging alone along that black road, sometimes in the teeth of wind and rain, and watching the white distant gleam of convolvulus through the park railings, gave me an exhilarating sensation of adventure. — Simone De Beauvoir

Going on the road for long stretches can seem daunting, and I certainly miss being home sometimes, but the chance to see so many different cities, let alone perform in them, is something I am really grateful for. — John Mulaney

It was mid-day when you went away. The sun was strong in the sky. I had done my work and sat alone on my balcony when you went away. Fitful gusts came winnowing through the smells of many distant fields. The doves cooed tireless in the shade, and a bee strayed in my room humming the news of many distant fields. The village slept in the noonday heat. The road lay deserted. In sudden fits the rustling of the leaves rose and died. I glazed at the sky and wove in the blue the letters of a name I had known, while the village slept in the noonday heat. I had forgotten to braid my hair. The languid breeze played with it upon my cheek. The river ran unruffled under the shady bank. The lazy white clouds did not move. I had forgotten to braid my hair. It was mid-day when you went away. The dust of the road was hot and the fields panting. The doves cooed among the dense leaves. I was alone in my balcony when you went away. — Rabindranath Tagore

Fame, on its best day, is kind of like a friendly wave from a stranger by the side of the road. And when it's not so good, it's like a long walk home, all alone, with nobody in when you get there. — Bruce Springsteen

The three of us do not go out very often as the three of us. I think Daniel is perfect for Jed, which is the highest compliment I can give. But my friendship isn't with him, and Jed understands that. When we hit the road, we hit it together alone.
We get to the bridge, out undestined destination. Even though there's no sign, no arrow, Jed turns at the last minute and parks us in a verge right before the bridge leaves the ground.
The trunk pops open, and Jed runs round back to retrieve a bag of oranges and a sweatshirt that fits me better.
Shall we make like lizards and leap? he asks.
I never felt the urge to jump off a bridge, but there are times I have wanted to jump out of my life, out of my skin.
Would you stroll me down the promenade instead? I ask back.
Most certainly, my splendid.
There is no word for our kind of friendship. Two people tho don't see each other a lot, but can make each other effortlessly happy. — David Levithan

I think maybe bad things seem worse when people are alone. When they can turn that bad thought over and over in their head, polishing it like a stone, until it shines dark and black. Maybe the key to making things better is being with other people. Little by little, smiles and laughter and hugs can chip away at any dark stone, even if it's as big as a boulder to start. Then finally, bit by bit, it shrinks until it's no bigger than a pebble, something that even I could kick down the road. — Shannon Wiersbitzky

They say when you reach a crossroad or a turning point in life, it really doesn't matter how we got there, but it's what we do next after we got there. Usually you arrive there by adversity, and then it is then and only then that we find out who we truly are and what we're truly made of. It's a process, a gift and a journey, and if we can travel it alone, although the road may be rough at the beginning, you find an ability to walk it. A way to start fresh again. It's neither a downfall nor a failure, but a new beginning. — Paris Hilton

To dance with a man is to concentrate a twelvemonth's regulation fire upon him in the fragment of an hour. To pass to courtship without acquaintance, to pass to marriage without courtship, is a skipping of terms reserved for those alone who tread this royal road. — Thomas Hardy

Marry me, Thena, please.

I tried to sigh and would have managed it, had he left me enough air space. If he intended on kissing me like this a lot, I was going to need a nose-mask and oxygen tanks in the future.
Yes, I said reluctantly, I think I must.
It was perfectly clear to me that the poor man had become disturbed in his reason, and in those conditions it would be cruel and unfair to send him to space alone, much less when space had become so dangerous. I must marry him, just to make sure he stayed safe. It was the least I could do, since I was fairly sure I'd started him on this road by trying to garrotte him and reducing his supply of oxygen to the
brain.
Yes, yes, you must, he said. It gets very boring in the Cathouse, without anyone to kick me.
Poor man. Madder than a broomer hopped up on oblivium. — Sarah A. Hoyt

The easiest thing in the world to do when you don't want to look inside yourself is to find escape hatches. You can always make it someone else's fault, it takes a lot of courage to admit that the fault
or rather the responsibility
is yours alone. And yet, as I've said before, this is the only way to go forward. If life's a road we travel, it's uphill all the way. — Susanna Tamaro

In the car going home, I said, "We should have stayed." Bogie said, "No, we shouldn't. You must always remember we have a life of our own that has nothing to do with Frank. He chose to live the way he's living - alone. It's too bad if he's lonely, but that's his choice. We have our own road to travel, never forget that - we can't live his life. — James Kaplan

I had always liked darkness. When I was small I was afraid of it if I was alone, but when I was with other I loved it and the change to the world it brought. Running around in the forest or between houses was different in the darkness, the world was enchanted, and we, we were breathless adventurers with blinking eyes and pounding hearts.
When I was older there was little I liked better than to stay up at night, the silence and the darkness had an allure, they carreid the promise of something immense. And autumn was my favorite season, wandering along the road by the river in the dark and the rain, not much could beat that.
But this darkness was different. This darkness rendered everything lifeless. It was static, it was the same whether you were awake or asleep, and it became harder and harder to motivate yourself to get up in the morning. — Karl Ove Knausgard

Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild.
Alexander Supertramp, May 1992 — Christopher McCandless

- Some roads to love aren't easy, and I've never been more thankful for being forced to fight for something. I started this journey with a partner I hated, and a man in the mirror I hated even more. The road took me from streets of New York to West Virginia, from the place I born to the place I found a home. It forced me to let go of my past and face my future. And I had to be made blind before I see. ( ... ) I promise to love you until I die. ( ... ) - I promise to never leave you alone in the dark, he whispered. — Abigail Roux

I stood up. Can a man stand alone, naked, and at his ease, wrist flexed at his side like Michelangelo's David, without assistance, without diversion, without drink, without friends, without a woman, in silence? Yes. It was possible to stand. Nothing happened. I listened. There was no sound: no boats on the river, no trucks on the road, not even cicadas. What if I didn't listen to the news? I didn't. Nothing happened. I realized I had been afraid of silence. — Walker Percy

It is not humility to insist on being someone that you are not. It is as much as saying that you know better than God who you are and who you ought to be. How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city? How do you expect to reach your own perfection by leading somebody else's life? His sanctity will never be yours; you must have the humility to work out your own salvation in a darkness where you are absolutely alone ... — Thomas Merton

Years later, when they were killed in a car crash on the Farm to Market Road, and the Nell-that-never-lived died with them, Olena, numbly rearranging the letters of her own name on the envelopes of the sympathy cards she received, discovered what the letters spelled: Olena; Alone. — Lorrie Moore

The dark night of the soul for me was one night in Florida, when I had been on the road for about four years and I realized that everybody around me was on my payroll, that my old friends hadn't been in touch with me and my family didn't know where to get me. I was a very unhappy guy and it was because I was really alone. — Barry Manilow

There are no guarantees with finally being honest and coming clean with people. Sometimes you don't win love back. Sometimes you lose the love you had. Sometimes you crush people that cared. Sometimes you break apart families. Sometimes you lose your career. Sometimes you lose your way of life. Sometimes you end up worse off than you were before. However, you walk away with a heart free from lies, regret and you have closure. Within time, you find yourself in a life that is far from the prison you once lived in. This type of freedom is the scariest road you will ever travel. However, it is the road God will never let you travel alone. — Shannon L. Alder

I felt I was in the loneliest place in the world, and I was apprehensive. Nothing could be heard except the occasional crash of an unknown creature in the forest, and, once in awhile, a deep thrumming similar to the lowest barely audible sound of a string bass. I was standing alone in 1972 in a semi-ruined lighthouse that my wife, fifteen-year-old daughter, and I had just purchased. The lighthouse was located atop a 200-foot cliff on an island a dozen miles from the Lake Superior shoreline. I was separated from the nearest human being by an unknown but surely great distance, and had hiked several hours through the forest to reach the place, following the path of an old road that once led to the lighthouse but was now no longer passable with a vehicle. The low rumble I occasionally heard, straddling the lowest limit of my auditory range, was caused by an occasional large wave entering a cavern below the lighthouse and resonating in the stony echo chamber. — Loren Graham

Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go
Millions of daughters walk in the mud
Millions of children wash in the flood
A million girls vomit and groan
Millions of families hopeless alone — Allen Ginsberg

The lesson is this: When the road gets dark and all hope seems lost, there's nothing to do but keep going. We, like Bilbo, must keep up our "hobbitry in heart." Even more important, as people of faith, we recognize that we are not alone. Whatever happens from this point on, we put our trust in God. And we go on. — Sarah Arthur

This raises the interesting, if seemingly outlandish, question of why car drivers, virtually alone among users of wheeled transport, do not wear helmets. Yes, cars do provide a nice metal cocoon with inflatable cushions. But in Australia, for example, head injuries among car occupants, according to research by the Federal Office of Road Safety, make up half the country's traffic-injury costs. Helmets, cheaper and more reliable than side-impact air bags, would reduce injuries and cut fatalities by some 25 percent.95 A crazy idea, perhaps, but so were air bags once. — Tom Vanderbilt

French Louis Seymour of the West Canada Creek, who knew how to survive all alone in a treacherous wilderness, and Mr. Alfred G. Vanderbilt of New York City and Raquette Lake, who was richer than God and traveled in his very own Pullman car, and Emmie Hubbard of the Uncas Road, who painted the most beautiful pictures when she was drunk and burned them in her woodstove when she was sober, were all ten times more interesting to me than Milton's devil or Austen's boy-crazy girls or that twitchy fool of Poe's who couldn't think of any place better to bury a body than under his own damn floor. — Jennifer Donnelly

Yes, she was the girl playing basketball with all the boys in the park, collecting cans by the side of the road, keeping secret pet kittens in an empty boxcar in the woods, walking alone at night through the rail yards, teaching her little sister how to kiss, reading out loud to herself, so absorbed by the story, singing sadly in the tub, building a fort from the junked cars out in the meadow, by herself in the front row at the black-and-white movies or in the alley, gazing at an eddy of cigarette stubs and trash and fall leaves, smoking her first cigarette at dusk by a pile of dead brush in the desert, then wishing at the stars
she was all of them, and she was so much more that just just her that I still didn't know. — Davy Rothbart

As I went back alone over that familiar road, I could almost believe that a boy and girl ran along beside me, as our shadows used to do, laughing and whispering to each other in the grass. — Willa Cather

Since the war nothing is so really frightening not the dark not alone in a room or anything on a road or a dog or a moon but two things, yes, indigestion and high places they are frightening. — Gertrude Stein

My parents had come from Mexico, a short road in my imagination. I felt myself as coming from a caramelized planet, an upside-down planet, pineapple-cratered. Though I was born here, I came from the other side of the looking glass, as did Alice, though not alone like Alice. Downtown I saw lots of brown people. Old men on benches. Winks from Filipinos. Sikhs who worked in the fields were the most mysterious brown men, their heads wrapped in turbans. They were the rose men. They looked like roses. — Richard Rodriguez

But the airplane is a wonderful thing. You are still in one place when you arrive at the other. The airplane is faster than the heart. You arrive quickly and you leave quickly. You don't grieve too much. And there is something else about the airplane. You can go back many times to the same place. And something strange happens if you go back often enough. You stop grieving for the past. You see that the past is something in your mind alone, that it doesn't exist in real life. You trample on the past, you crush it. In the beginning it is like trampling on a garden. In the end you are just walking on ground. That is the way we have to learn to live now. The past is here." He touched his heart. "It isn't there." And he pointed at the dusty road. — V.S. Naipaul

The car rolled slowly along the deserted corniche, headlights cleaving its way through Beirut by night. In gentle swerves to avoid potholes, the Mercedes waltzed along a straight road in a dance of death. Sick palm trees and parched grass divided the tarred road of civilization. The sea alone was testimony to God's beautiful creation. But in its belly, corpses, limbs, garbage, and ordnance mingled with a sea life on the verge of extinction. — Dana K. Haffar

Anyhow, even though I might go out on a date with a boy, emotionally I just wouldn't be able to concentrate. I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string. I'd be thinking about one unrelated thing after another. I don't know, I guess finally I want to be alone a little while longer. And I want to let my thoughts wander freely. In that sense, I guess, I'm probably still on the road to recovery. — Haruki Murakami

Every year, more than 120,000 new books are published in Britain, creating millions of volumes that will never be opened, let alone read. Many of these unread books are shredded into tiny fibre pellets called bitumen modifier, which can beused to make roads, holding the blacktop in place and doubling up as a sound absorber. A mile of motorway consumes about 50,000 books. The M6 Toll Road used up two-and-a-half million old Mills and Boon novels, romantic dreams crushed daily by juggernauts...Having your unread books vanish into the authorless anonymity of a road feels pleasingly melancholic, like having your ashes scattered in a vast ocean. — Joe Moran

When I'm doing a movie, I'm not doing anything else. It's all about the movie. I don't have a wife. I don't have a kid. Nothing can get in my way ... I've made a choice, so far, to go on this road alone. Because this is my time. This is my time to make movies. — Quentin Tarantino

You are always in the world. Even in Vagabond. I am not on the road, I am not eating nothing. But in a way we all have a Mona. We all have inside ourselves a woman who walks alone on the road. In all women there is something in revolt that is not expressed. — Agnes Varda

Regardless of where many of us believe we land - in that field encumbered by not too much baggage or entirely too much - we all come from the same place, which is a road rutted by experience so banal, nearly remarkable, that memory tricks us into remembrance of it again and again, as if experience alone were not enough. What are we to do with such a life, one in which we are not left alone to events - love, shopping, and so forth - but to the holocaust of feeling that memory, misremembered or not, imposes on us? — Hilton Als

What sets wilderness apart in the modern day is not that it's dangerous (it's almost certainly safer than any town or road) or that it's solitary (you can, so they say, be alone in a crowded room) or full of exotic animals (there are more at the zoo). it's that five miles out in the woods you can't buy anything. — Bill McKibben

If you sincerely desire a truly well-rounded education, you must study the extremists, the obscure and "nutty." You need the balance! Your poor brain is already being impregnated with middle-of-the-road crap, twenty-four hours a day, no matter what. Network TV, newspapers, radio, magazines at the supermarket ... even if you never watch, read, listen, or leave your house, even if you are deaf and blind, the telepathic pressure alone of the uncountable normals surrounding you will insure that you are automatically well-grounded in consensus reality. — Ivan Stang

You know every story, every wound, every memory. Their whole life's happiness is wrapped up in you... every single second. Don't you get it? Look down the road to her wedding. I'm in a room alone with her, fixing her veil, fluffing her dress, telling her no woman has ever looked so beautiful. And my fear is she'll be thinking, "I wish my mom was here. — Jackie Harrison

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. — Thomas Merton

Phoebe burst into tears. For several minutes she stood weeping in the middle of the road, the choking, gulping sobs of childhood. Something was wrong; something was wrong but she didn't know what. She was alone in the middle of nowhere, behaving strangely, with no one around to help her, and what people were around she wanted only to escape. — Jennifer Egan

I surrender my fears and burdens to God. I needn't carry into my day the burdens of my existence. Rather, I surrender them into the hands of God. I know that they will be lifted from me, for what I place on the altar in my mind is then altered in my life. When I do not know what to say or do, He who is alive within me will illumine my thinking and guide my words. When a possible outcome makes me weak with fear, I will feel His arms around me. And when the road seems lonely and long before me, I will know I am not alone. Dear God, Please take from me the burdens that I carry. Please uplift my thinking and bring forth a miracle. Send a wave of love to disperse my fear. And so it is. Amen. — Marianne Williamson

Why, though? I knew it didn't make sense. I did love her in my own way. Very much. She was beautiful and fun and caring, but I was bored, so bored. I had to think of other girls to get a hard-on. I didn't want to start the long arduous road to her orgasm, let alone mine. Afraid to touch her in case it was mistaken for an application for sex. So in order to feel something through the numbness, I decided to perpetrate on my soul and hers the equivalent of quenching cigarettes on my paralyzed limbs. My hope was that if I registered pain, it would be welcomed as a sign of life. — Anonymous

The road of 'God alone' struck me with unsettling fear. So I lingered in a kind of limbo. Unable to go back, unable to go on. Uncertain. Tentative. How strange that we tend to stand ankle-deep in the spiritual life even though the grounding depth of intimacy with God is the most nourishing experience of our lives and affirms our very being! — Sue Monk Kidd

Dreams and coffee and sunrises make up the rhythms of the road.
Music is a part of it, too: the popular music on the jukeboxes and radio stations. You hear it constantly, in diners and on car radios. The music has a rhythm that fits the steady drumming of tires over pavement. It seeps into your bloodstream. After a while it ceases to make any difference whether or not you like the stuff. When you're traveling alone, a nameless rider with a succession of strangers, it can give you a comforting sense of the familiar to hear the same music over and over.
At any given time, a few current hits will be overplayed to exhaustion by the rock & roll stations. In hitching across the continent, you might hear the same song fifty or sixty times. Certain songs become connected in your mind with certain trips. — Kenn Kaufman

On the road, as a 'rock star,' there's superficial attention and adulation is thrown at you for a couple of hours - then you're alone in your room and it's lonely. — Melissa Etheridge

To all of you reading this who are on the fence about therapy because of the cost: It's smart money, spend it. That one hundred bucks an hour pays off down the road when you learn through therapy how to get out of your own way, stop self-sabotaging and thus make good decisions about relationships and career. Think of it as an investment in yourself. Simply going to therapy helps. Just carving out an hour for yourself, and deciding that you and your life are worth spending some time and money on makes a difference. That simple act alone boosts your self-esteem. Don't think of going to therapy as "I'm a broken pile of crap and need someone to fix me," think of it as "I'm going to change myself for the better instead of crying, masturbating and blaming my parents for the rest of my life. — Adam Carolla

This life's a long old road
We shouldn't have to walk alone
But if you find the right companion
You won't feel so worn out when you've grown
All life is precious
And every day's a prize
And sometimes you'll find an answer in the sky — Elton John

She thinks of the way angels arrive, when you lease expect them, when the road is dark, when you're bleeding and alone and hopeless, when you're sleeping in a basement, convinced that no one knows you're there. — Alice Hoffman

How happy is the little stone That rambles in the road alone, And doesn't care about careers, And exigencies never fears; Whose coat of elemental brown A passing universe put on; And independent as the sun, Associates or glows alone, Fulfilling absolute decree In casual simplicity. — Emily Dickinson

Then one day, from the window of a car (the destination of that journey is now forgotten), I saw a billboard by the side of the road. The sight could not have lasted very long; perhaps the car stopped for a moment, perhaps it slowed down long enough for me to see, large and looming shapes similar to those in my book, but shapes that I had never seen before. and yet, all of a sudden, I knew what they were; I heard them in my head, they metamorphosed from black lines and white spaces into a solid, sonourous, meangingful reality. I had done this all by myself. No one had performed the magic for me. I and the shapes were alone together, revealing ourselves in a silently respectful dialogue. Since I could turn bare lines into a living reality, I was all-poweful. i could read. — Alberto Manguel

Turn from that road's beguiling ease; return
to your hunger's turret. Enter, climb the stair
chill with disuse, where the croaking toad of time
regards from shimmering eyes your slow ascent
and the drip, drip, of darkness glimmers on the stone
to show you how your longing waits alone.
What alchemy shines from under that shut door,
spinning out gold from the hollow of the heart?
("The Sea's Wash In The Hollow Of The Heart") — Denise Levertov

Confession is a difficult Discipline for us because we all too often view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners. We feel that everyone else has advanced so far into holiness that we are isolated and alone in our sin. We cannot bear to reveal our failures and shortcomings to others. We imagine that we are the only ones who have not stepped onto the high road to heaven. Therefore, we hide ourselves from one another and live in veiled lies and hypocrisy.
But if we know that the people of God are first a fellowship of sinners, we are freed to hear the unconditional call of God's love and to confess our needs openly before our brothers and sisters. We know we are not alone in our sin. The fear and pride that cling to us like barnacles cling to others also. We are sinners together. In acts of mutual confession we release the power that heals. Our humanity is no longer denied, but transformed. — Richard J. Foster

Someone sits in a mountain vale A robe of clouds, rainbows for tassels The fragrant forest is the place to live The road has been long and difficult With a heart full of doubt and regret A life has passed and nothing has been accomplished Others call it failure I stand alone devoted to this Cold Mountain life — Hanshan

The moment we begin to feel satisfied that we are making some progress along the road of sanctification, it is all the more necessary to repent and confess that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Yet the Christian life is not one of gloom, but of ever increasing joy in the Lord. God alone knows our good works, all we know is his good work. We can do no more than hearken to his commandment, carry on and rely on his grace, walk in his commandments and - sin. All the time our new righteousness, our sanctification, the light which is meant to shine, are veiled from our eyes. The left hand knows not what the right hand does. But we believe and are well assured, "that he which began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1.6). — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It is the secret fear that we are unlovable that isolates us," the passage goes, "but it is only because we are isolated that we think we are unlovable. Someday, you do not know when, you will be driving down a road. And someday, you do not know when, he, or indeed she, will be there. You will be loved because for the first time in your life, you will truly not be alone. You will have chosen to not be alone. — Gabrielle Zevin

I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me. The thought of being a lawyer or a councilman or an engineer, anything like that, seemed impossible to me. To get married, to have children, to get trapped in the family structure. To go someplace to work every day and to return. It was impossible. To do things, simple things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day ... was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep. — Charles Bukowski

There's something nice about the silence of a car ride in the dark, going home. When you were tired of the radio and conversation, and it was okay to just be alone with your thoughts and the road ahead. If you're that comfortable with someone, you don't have to talk. — Sarah Dessen

Maybe I can learn to live in a way that makes it worth writing about, and maybe I can actually become something more than this empty shell. — Charlotte Eriksson

Two shadowy figures had appeared in the distance. A young girl led a donkey by its halter, chattering to a child perched on its swaying back. What in God's name were they doing out alone at night? They headed down the dirt road straight toward the house where Tehrazzi was apparently holed up. Every muscle in her body went rigid with denial. "Oh no ... " Had Dec heard the kids? Did he know they were in danger? Could he alert the children before the air strike? Not if he hadn't seen them. What should she do? She was too afraid to yell out in case someone started shooting, but no way could she sit back and let those children suffer. The breath shot in and out of her nose as she counted backward from ten, praying Dec would do something so she wouldn't have to. Ten, nine, eight ... The little boy laughed. Bryn squeezed her eyes — Kaylea Cross

I think I'm probably going to have more luck on tour, on the road, than I am at home, because as hectic as traveling can be, I have a little bit more control, for life situations out there on the road. It's the one aspect of my life I feel like I do have some control of. I can wake up in my hotel room, I'm alone and I can ease into the day and do what I need to do. It's not like I've got to get up and drive the kids to school, feed the dog, get to the gym, go to practice, go pay a bill, you know what I mean? — Mike Ness

Here's a taxidermist's," Bill said. "Want to buy anything? Nice stuffed dog?"
"Come on," I said. "You're pie-eyed."
"Pretty nice stuffed dogs," Bill said. "Certainly brighten up your flat."
"Come on."
"Just one stuffed dog. I can take 'em or leave 'em alone. But listen, Jake. Just one stuffed dog."
"Come on."
"Mean everything in the world to you after you bought it. Simple exchange of values. You give them money. They give you a stuffed dog."
"We'll get one on the way back."
"All right. Have it your own way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault. — Ernest Hemingway,

There was the sun, letting down great glowing masses of heat; there was life, active and snarling, moving about them like a fly swarm - the dark pants of smoke from the engine, a crisp "all aboard!" and a bell ringing. Confusedly Maury saw eyes in the milk train staring curiously up at him, heard Gloria and Anthony in quick controversy as to whether he should go to the city with her, then another clamor and she was gone and the three men, pale as ghosts, were standing alone upon the platform while a grimy coal-heaver went down the road on top of a motor truck, carolling hoarsely at the summer morning. CHAPTER — F Scott Fitzgerald

And this pleasure, different from every other, had in the end created in him a need of her, which she alone, by her presence or by her letters, could assuage, almost as disinterested, almost as artistic, as perverse as another need which characterised this new period in Swann's life, where the sereness, the depression of the preceding years had been followed by a sort of spiritual superabundance, without his knowing to what he owed this unlooked-for enrichment of his life, any more than a person in delicate health who from a certain moment grows stronger, puts on flesh, and seems for a time to be on the road to a complete recovery: - this other need, which, too, developed in him independently of the visible, material world, was the need to listen to music and to learn to know it. — Marcel Proust

The last dying days of summer, fall coming on fast. A cold night, the first of the season, a change from the usual bland Maryland climate. Cold, thought the boy; his mind felt numb. The trees he could see through his bedroom window were tall charcoal sticks, shivering, afraid of the wind or only trying to stand against it. Every tree was alone out there. The animals were alone, each in its hole, in its thin fur, and anything that got hit on the road tonight would die alone. Before morning, he thought, its blood would freeze in the cracks of the asphalt. — Poppy Z. Brite

Black bears, though, are not fearsome. I encountered one on the road to my house in Vermont, alone at night. I picked up two stones just in case, but I wasn't afraid of him. I felt a hunter's exhilaration and a brotherly feeling. — Edward Hoagland

Languor is upon your heart and the slumber is still on your eyes.

Has not the word come to you that the flower is reigning in splendour among thorns? Wake, oh awaken! let not the time pass in vain!

At the end of the stony path, in the country of virgin solitude, my friend is sitting all alone. Deceive him not. Wake, oh awaken!

What if the sky pants and trembles with the heat of the midday sun---what if the burning sand spreads its mantle of thirst---

Is there no joy in the deep of your heart? At every footfall of yours, will not the harp of the road break out in sweet music of pain? — Rabindranath Tagore

I could live there all alone, she thought, slowing the car to look down the winding garden path to the small blue front door with, perfectly, a white cat on the step. No one would ever find me there, either, behind all those roses, and just to make sure I would plant oleanders by the road. I will light a fire in the cool evenings and toast apples at my own hearth. I will raise white cats and sew white curtains for the windows and sometimes come out of my door to go to the store to buy cinnamon and tea and thread. People will come to me to have their fortunes told, and I will brew love potions for sad maidens; I will have a robin ... — Shirley Jackson

Not the first time. I didn't think my heart could stand it. But the airplane is a wonderful thing. You are still in one place when you arrive at the other. The airplane is faster than the heart. You arrive quickly and you leave quickly. You don't grieve too much. And there is something else about the airplane. You can go back many times to the same place. And something strange happens if you go back often enough. You stop grieving for the past. You see that the past is something in your mind alone, that it doesn't exist in real life. You trample on the past, you crush it. In the beginning it is like trampling on a garden. In the end you are just walking on ground. That is the way we have to learn to live now. The past is here." He touched his heart. "It isn't there." And he pointed at the dusty road. I — V.S. Naipaul

A true leader must have enough backbone to stand alone, even when the crowd wants to take the easy road home. A true leader cannot be dependent on companionship for his or her security, but must learn to trust in God alone. Singleness can give us the kind of backbone - courage, confidence, and leadership skills that an effective Christian must learn. — Leslie Ludy

Take a long, hard look down the road you will have to travel once you have made a commitment to work for change. Know that this transformation will not happen right away. Change often takes time. It rarely happens all at once. In the movement, we didn't know how history would play itself out. When we were getting arrested and waiting in jail or standing in unmovable lines on the courthouse steps, we didn't know what would happen, but we knew it had to happen.

Use the words of the movement to pace yourself. We used to say that ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part. And if we believe in the change we seek, then it is easy to commit to doing all we can, because the responsibility is ours alone to build a better society and a more peaceful world. — John Lewis

Many days passed before we could speak to the Golden One again. But then came the day when the sky turned white, as if the sun had burst and spread its flame in the air, and the fields lay still without breath, and the dust of the road was white in the glow. So the women of the field were weary, and they tarried over their work, and they were far from the road when we came. But the Golden One stood alone at the hedge, waiting. We stopped and we saw that their eyes, so hard and scornful to the world, were looking at us as if they would obey any word we might speak. — Ayn Rand

The thing is, I was so bursting for the loo that I thought my bladder was going to explode. I could hardly speak, let alone make it up your stairs. When you threw the key down and I had to bend over to pick it up, I thought that was it, I was going to flood the road! And I'm not even exaggerating. I've never been so desperate in my life. — Jill Mansell

Alone in the car with my social life all before and behind me, I was suspended in the beautiful solitude of the open road, in a kind of introspection that only outdoor space generates, for inside and outside are more intertwined than the usual distinctions allow. The emotion stirred by the landscape is piercing, a joy close to pain when the blue is deepest on the horizon or the clouds are doing those spectacular fleeting things so much easier to recall than to describe. — Rebecca Solnit

So now you're on the run,' Warrick said wistfully. 'Travelling the Dark Highway, a lone wolf. With your friend, who is another wolf. Two lone wolves. Two wolves, really. Not really alone. Two wolves in a car. Travelling. One of them naked and bloody. The other with her ass hanging out. — Derek Landy

Alone, her soul destroyed and her heart bereft and empty, the Lady Ninnia touched her amulet and closed her eyes. "No," she breathed, "I was wrong. This time, my wisdom has failed me. Our daughter is not ready. To become the Handmaiden of Orion, one must know terrible grief in order to learn compassion." She gazed after her husband and shook her head sorrowfully. "Even the deaths of us, her parents, are not, I fear, enough. May she find what she needs upon that dark and deadly road upon which I have sent her. My poor, poor child - farewell. — Robin Jarvis

The rain is, in a sense,
The sole sad friend of those who find themselves
Thinking, wide awake, until the dawn,
Who, in bed, alone, with fevered hands,
Listen to it, soothed. They like the company
Of its faint moan across the sleeping plain,
Its rustling in the garden all night long.

- On the Great Grey Road (Sur ce Grand Chemin Gris...) — Alain-Fournier

On the brink alone he stands with quick and eager feet. Jump across and run, boy, don't worry what you'll meet. For in the days before you, life will intervene With all the things you yearn to see and all that you have seen ... . Don't close your eyes and wonder what lies across the gap; There is no road before you; you cannot find the map. For with your heart you forge a way that angels fear to tread, And gather up your troubles for the day when you are dead, And gather up your troubles for the day when you are dead ... . Run, boy, run. Run with all your might. The sunrise burns before you, and on your heels the night. And if the darkness lingers long, you'll lose your soul's own song; Yes, if the darkness lingers, you'll lose your own soul's song. — Kristen Heitzmann

There pass the careless people
That call their souls their own:
Here by the road I loiter,
How idle and alone.
Ah, past the plunge of plummet,
In seas I cannot sound,
My heart and soul and senses,
World without end, are drowned.
His folly has not fellow
Beneath the blue of day
That gives to man or woman
His heart and soul away.
There flowers no balm to sain him
From east of earth to west
That's lost for everlasting
The heart out of his breast.
Here by the labouring highway
With empty hands I stroll:
Sea-deep, till doomsday morning,
Lie lost my heart and soul. — A.E. Housman

Without hesitation, Dove chose the nowhere road. For that was the only place, in his heart of hearts, that he really wanted to go. — Nelson Algren

Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season. — Heraclitus

The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can't see this house. You'd never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn't see but a few feet ahead. I didn't meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That's what I wanted - to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was the ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost. — Eugene O'Neill

There must be different kinds of loneliness, or at least different degrees of loneliness, but the most terrifying loneliness is not experienced by everyone and can be understood by only a few. I compare the panic in this kind of loneliness to the dog we see running frantically down the road pursuing the family car. He is not really being left behind, for the family knows it is to return, but for that moment in his limited understanding, he is being left alone forever, and he has to run and run to survive. It is no wonder that we make terrible choices in our lives to avoid loneliness. — Charles M. Schulz

The Road is not a record of fatherly fidelity; it is a testament to the abyss of a parent's greatest fears. The fear of leaving your child alone, of dying before your child has reached adulthood and learned to work the mechanisms and face the dangers of the world, or found a new partner to face them with. The fear of one day being obliged for your child's own good, for his peace and comfort, to do violence to him or even end his life. And, above all, the fear of knowing - as every parent fears - that you have left your children a world more damaged, more poisoned, more base and violent and cheerless and toxic, more doomed, than the one you inherited. It is in the audacity and single-mindedness with which The Road extends the metaphor of a father's guilt and heartbreak over abandoning his son to shift for himself in a ruined, friendless world that The Road finds its great power to move and horrify the reader. — Michael Chabon

Midway in our life's journey, I went astray
from the straight road and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood. — Dante Alighieri

Well, that was the end of me, the real end. Two pound ten every Tuesday and a room of the Gray's Inn Road. Saved, rescued and with my place to hide in - what more did I want? I crept in and hid. The lid of the coffin shut down with a bang. Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only - to be left alone. No more pawings, no more pryings - leave me alone. — Jean Rhys

We are not traveling alone, we cross paths with different people along the way. We may have an individual road to travel, but we cross paths with different people from time to time who would share different roles in our lives. These people may come and go, or even stay for a lifetime, but no matter what, they all came for a reason - to make this journey more meaningful. — Kcat Yarza

Life on the open road is liberty ... to be alone, to have few needs, to be unknown, everywhere a foreigner and at home, and to walk grandly and solitarily in conquest of the world. — Isabelle Eberhardt

Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully. — Norton Juster

We are vampires, Kanin had told me, on one of our last nights together. It makes no difference who we are, where we came from. Princes, Masters and rabids alike, we are monsters, cut off from humanity. They will never trust us. They will never accept us. We hide in their midst and walk among them, but we are forever separate.
Damned. Alone. You don't understand now, but you will. There will come a time when the road before you splits, and you must decide your path. Will you choose to become a demon with a human face, or will you fight your demon until the end of time, knowing you will forever struggle alone? — Julie Kagawa