Quotes & Sayings About Lonely Woman

One day, I went to a soba restaurant outside town, and while I was waiting for the zarusoba I opened an old graph magazine. There was a picture of an exhausted, lonely kneeling woman who wore a checked patterned yukata after the tradegy of a large earthquake. With the intensity of my chest ready to burn up, I fell in love with that poor woman. I also felt a horrifying desire for her. Maybe tragedy and desire are back to back to one another. — Osamu Dazai

If our poor die of hunger, it is not because God does not care for them. Rather, it is because neither you nor I are generous enough. It is because we are not instruments of love in the hands of God. We do not recognize Christ when once again He appears to us in the hungry man, in the lonely woman, in the child who is looking for a place to get warm. — Mother Teresa

That night, she told me the old story again about the woman who had been left behind on a desert island by the man she loved. She waited for him to return for many years, surviving on seaweed and sand, until at last she grew so small she could fit herself inside a bottle and roll into the sea. Who found the bottle, I wondered, but my mother said no one knew what happened to it or where the woman had wanted to go. A fish could have swallowed the bottle, she said, or it could have been dashed against rocks. Other possibilities: sharks, mermaids, lonely sailors at sea. — Jenny Offill

The Old Testament records the sage words of an old woman in addressing two younger ones: 'The Lord grant', said Naomi, 'that ye may find rest, each of you, in the house of her husband!' Who ever heard of a woman finding rest in the house of her husband?
And yet, and yet ! The restless hearts are not
the hearts of wives and of mothers, as many a lonely woman knows. There is no more crushing load than the load of a loveless life. It is a burden that is often beautifully and graciously borne, but its weight is a very real one. The mother may have a bent form, a furrowed brow, and worn, thin hands ; but her heart found its rest for all that. Naomi was an old woman; she knew the world very well, and her words are worth weighing. Heavy luggage is Christ's strange cure for weary hearts. — F.W. Boreham

I'm a woman; in so many ways I've been programmed to please. I took the job and spent time hunkered over figures, budgets, charts, and fiscal-year projections. I tried, but I hated it.
"Working at a job you don't like is the same as going to prison every day," my father used to say. He was right. I felt imprisoned by an impressive title, travel, perks, and a good salary. On the inside, I was miserable and lonely, and I felt as if I was losing myself. I spent weekends working on reports no one read, and I gave presentations that I didn't care about. It made me feel like a sellout and, worse, a fraud.
Now set free, like any inmate I had to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. — Kathleen Flinn

D'you mind if we get going?' said Strike, checking his watch. 'I told Elin I'll be over tonight.'

'No problem,' said Robin.

Yet for some reason - perhaps due to her headache, perhaps because of the lonely woman sitting in Summerfield among the memories of loved ones who had left her - Robin could easily have wept all over again. — Robert Galbraith

Man can never know the loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in the woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. Woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which she is bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love a taking of man within her, an act of birth and rebirth, of child rearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to be. But for woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment man rests inside of her. — Anais Nin

You, Sir, were created to be part of a union of two. Only in embracing your nature as a member of a duo will you discover your purpose in life. Utilizing your other half for selfish purposes is not what God intended. Your wife is not there just to scratch your itch. That is not the path to fulfillment. This is a spiritual, intellectual, and emotional journey of two souls becoming one. Neglect that fact of nature and you will die an old, loveless, lonely loser. Dedicate your life to elevating your woman to a place of maturity and fulfillment and you will save your own life and experience heaven's best. — Michael Pearl

I was lonelier than I should be, for a woman in love, or half in love. — Edna O'Brien

I've been asked if I'd consider doing Ropes as a straight novel - which is flattering, I suppose - but I can't imagine why I'd want to limit myself that way. There's a certain immediacy we gain from that specific image of Fred being struck by a revelation, of those union workers appearing from the shadows in an alley, of a lonely woman wondering for just a moment if she should make a pass at this young man in her hotel room — James Vance

At night, there was the feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a woman wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. We were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. — Ernest Hemingway,

Where is she? Living or dead, where is she? If, as he folds the handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able with an enchanted power to bring before him the place where she found it and the night-landscape near the cottage where it covered the little child, would he descry her there? On the waste where the brick-kilns are burning with a pale blue flare, where the straw-roofs of the wretched huts in which the bricks are made are being scattered by the wind, where the clay and water are hard frozen and the mill in which the gaunt blind horse goes round all day looks like an instrument of human torture - traversing this deserted, blighted spot there is a lonely figure with the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and driven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem, from all companionship. It is the figure of a woman, too; but it is miserably dressed, and no such clothes ever came through the hall and out at the great door of the Dedlock mansion. — Charles Dickens

A cat is an excuse for a lonely woman to talk to herself. That's what a cat is. — Mark Helprin

It should be one of the tests," the old woman said. "Humans are almost always lonely. — Frank Herbert

Wanting a woman was something he knew quite well - but wanting to take care of a woman so that she would never hurt, never want, never be afraid or lonely - he had no experience with that. There had been beautiful women in his past; intelligent women, clever women, women with wit and courage and passion, but as far as he could remember, never one like Mel; never before a woman who had everything he'd ever wanted. — Robyn Carr

There's something unnatural about a woman finding babies or, more specifically, conversation about babies, boring. They'll think she's bitter, jealous, lonely. But she's also bored of everybody telling her how lucky she is, what with all that sleep and all that freedom and spare time, the ability to go on dates or head off to Paris at a moments notice. It sounds like they're consoling her, and she resents this and feels patronized by it. — David Nicholls

Love at first sight is not complicated. In our dreams we build a woman, we give her life from our own life, and then we have to wait. Through trial and error we try to find that nameless ghost that's haunting our most lonely of nights. And I felt as if I had found what I was looking for. Finally, my ghost had a name and a face. — Cristian Mihai

Being exceptional isn't revolutionary, it's lonely. It separates you from your community. Who are you, really, without community? I have been held up consistently as a token, as the "right" kind of trans woman (educated, able-bodied, attractive, articulate, heteronormative). It promotes the delusion that because I "made it," that level of success is easily accessible to all young trans women. Let's be clear: It is not. — Janet Mock

I'm by myself," she said finally. "No family to speak of."
"I see." Leaning forward again, he rested his arms against the table. "That must be rather difficult."
"Sometimes."
"And lonely, I imagine. Perhaps that is why you came here tonight?"
Her jaw popped under the strain of maintaining decorum. "First: I said I was alone, not lonely. There's a big difference. And second: is that really why you think I'm here?"
"I do not know what to think. I know you must have reasons for being here other than what you have already hinted at. Reasons important enough to make an otherwise intelligent woman not only bring food to a stranger so late at night, but also accept his invitation to sit inside an empty motel room without a second thought."
"Why don't you just call me a hooker while you're at it? — Angela B. Wade

I was becoming convinced that I was going to be lonely for the rest of my life. It wasn't that I wasn't meeting men. I was. It was just that they all drove me crazy. — Maria Dahvana Headley

I remember a man, a very lonely man, coming up to me at the end of a reading and looking into my face and saying, 'I feel as if I have looked down a corridor and seen into your soul.' And I looked at him and said, 'You haven't.' You know, Here's the good news and the bad news: you haven't! I made something, and you and I could look at it together, but it's not me; you don't live with me; you're not intimate with me. You're not the man I live with or my friend. You will never know me in that way. I'm making something, like Joseph Cornell makes his boxes and everyone looks into them, but it's the box you look into; it's not the man or the woman. It's alchemy of language and memory and imagination and time and music and sounds that gets made, and that's different from 'Here is what happened to me when I was ten. — Marie Howe

How much of it was real. How much of it was just a dream. Is it possible that all of it was just a play between two lonely people? Was this woman the one I really love or just the product of my imagination and of my desire to love and be loved. Would I be able to make this dream come true or was I heading into disillusionment and tragedy? — Stevan V. Nikolic

He pushed my back against the stall door, kissing me. Edward had tried kissing me, but I'd been so shocked I'd barely had time to explore how it felt. Lucy had told me stories of shady corners and sweaty palms. But this was passionate. Wild. Something I'd never known.
"Have you kissed a girl before?" I whispered. He ran his thumb over my cheek. His eyes lingered on my lips.
"Yes," he said. I thought of Alice, her pretty blonde hair, the split lip that made her so vulnerable. But it wasn't her name he said.
"A woman at the docks in Brisbane. She didn't mean anything. I was lonely. It wasn't love." A prostitute, he meant. — Megan Shepherd

It was early in my career, and I had been seeing Mary, a shy, lonely, and physically collapsed young woman, for about three months in weekly psychotherapy, dealing with the ravages of her terrible history of early abuse. One day I opened the door to my waiting room and saw her standing there provocatively, dressed in a miniskirt, her hair dyed flaming red, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a snarl on her face. "You must be Dr. van der Kolk," she said. "My name is Jane, and I came to warn you not to believe any the lies that Mary has been telling you. Can I come in and tell you about her?" I was stunned but fortunately kept myself from confronting "Jane" and instead heard her out. Over the course of our session I met not only Jane but also a hurt little girl and an angry male adolescent. That was the beginning of a long and productive treatment. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

If love was only for the perfect, what a sad and lonely world it would it be. We are the culmination of every good and bad choice we've ever made. Your mistakes have made you into an incredibly fierce and loving woman; one I am — Ruth Cardello

I wish you'd let my missus introduce you to one of her available lady friends."
"Absolutely not. I appreciate the thought, but no. I'm not lonely or starved for feminine companionship."
"What if I guarantee Margaret won't pester you with matchmaker questions?"
"You cannot guarantee such a thing. She will pester me. It is a woman's nature. — Chris Karlsen

I'd rather be a silly old fool than a lonely old woman. — Candy Darling

I was lonely, deadly lonely. And I was to find out then, as I found out so many times, over and over again, that women especially are social beings, who are not content with just husband and family, but must have a community, a group, an exchange with others. Young and old, even in the busiest years of our lives, we women especially are victims of the long loneliness.
It was years before I woke up without that longing for a face pressed against my breast, an arm about my shoulder. The sense of loss was there.
I never was so unhappy, never felt so great the sense of loneliness. No matter how many times I gave up mother, father, husband, brother, daughter, for His sake, I had to do it over again.
Tamar is partly responsible for the title of this book in that when I was beginning it she was writing me about how alone a mother of young children always is. I had also just heard from an old woman who lived a long and full life, and she too spoke of her loneliness — Dorothy Day

And yet he was holding the hand of a little boy and trailing the boy's exasperating mother. Perhaps he was lonely. Or perhaps it was the look in her eyes when he'd emerged from the pond and found her watching him that urged his footsteps on. It had been a long time - a very, very long time - since a woman had last looked at him like that. As if she saw something she liked. — Elizabeth Hoyt

It's better to be dead, or even perfectly well, than to suffer from the wrong affliction. The man who owns up to arthritis in a beri-beri year is as lonely as a woman in a last month's dress. — John Forbes Nash

Male writers who never find the stabilizing force of an understanding woman in their lives usually end up as the jaded figures of their days, the types who give much artistic expression to the world, but who are lonely in their overcrowded worlds of love. — Janvier Chouteu-Chando

There is lonely, and there is alone time. I have found that both have etched character upon my soul. — Alfa H

Begin ... where you are, NOT where you want to be. Begin stuck in the doldrums of your false story
if that is where you are. Begin there because, in truth, there is no other place to start from. Tell yourself that you are going to listen for the sound of your own voice
and remind yourself when you forget. And you will forget, over and over again. — Florence Falk

You have no idea, do you? No idea what it's like to have no money, no way on God's earth to beg, borrow, or steal it. No idea what it's like to have no choice. No idea what it's like to sit there and stare at the bare walls and realize you've got to do something, and whatever you do, it's the wrong thing. You could take some money, propose to a girl, and break her heart later, and in so doing lose the love of the single most breathtaking woman you've ever met, the love of your lonely godforsaken life. — Beatriz Williams

In all things, the beginning and end are the most engaging. Does the love of man and woman suggest only their embraces? No, the sorrow of lovers parted before they met, laments over promises betrayed, long lonely nights spent sleepless until dawn, pining thoughts for one in some far place, a woman left sighing over past love in her tumbledown abode - it is these, surely, that embody the romance of love. — Yoshida Kenko

I have witnessed the strength of our people driven from their own land. The tenacious march south is like a silent protest against death. In this tidal wave of men and woman a hatred mingles with hope. And this furious force of will that has infected me too will carry me to the very end of my own lonely progress. — Shan Sa

He was in love with every pretty woman he saw now, their forms at a distance, their shadows on the walls. — F Scott Fitzgerald

It always seemed to me," she said at last, "that it must require a great deal of courage to be an artist, if only because the creative process is such a lonely one. I should imagine it must be all the more difficult for a woman. — Richard Yates

I'm still amazed at how my mother emerged from her lonely early life as such an affectionate and levelheaded woman. — Hillary Clinton

If you're a woman, it's almost impossible to establish a relationship. You're too much for everybody. It's too much. The woman always has to play this role of being fragile and dependent. And if you're not, they'are fascinated by you, but only for a little while. And then they want to change you and crush you. And then they leave. So, lots of lonely hotel rooms, my dear. — Marina Abramovic

I am so lonely without you, Aedan," Jane said simply.
"You truly want me?"
"More than anything. I'm only half without you."
"Then you are my woman." His words were finality, a bond he would not permit broken. She had given herself to his keeping. He would never let her go.
"And you'll never leave me?" she pressed.
"I'll stay with you for all of ever, lass."
Jane's eyes flared, and she looked at him strangely. "And then yet another day?" she asked breathlessly.
"Oh, aye. — Karen Marie Moning

My talent is looking into a woman's eyes and instinctively knowing what I need to. If she's lonely or bored; neglected or abused; timid or adventurous; satisfied or confused; looking to recapture the past or re-invent the present; making plans for tomorrow or merely concerned about tonight. I discover what a woman is looking for and promise it to her. If all she wants is a good time, she gets everything. If she wants more, I lie and take what she has to give. Then I move on.
— Roy L. Pickering Jr.

A rejected infant will often die, even if its basic needs are met. A rejected child will spend his whole life trying to please everyone else, and never please himself. A rejected woman will often cheat, just to feel desirable. A rejected man will rarely try again, no matter how lonely he is. A rejected people will convince themselves they deserve it, if only to make sense of a senseless world. I'm — Amy Harmon

You're one of those guys who sit back and wait for the guy to screw up. When she's hurting or lonely, you guys swoop in. Hell, I should tip my hat to you guys. I couldn't do it. I couldn't wait around and watch the woman I wanted be with another guy, waiting until there's a break with them, until she's vulnerable." He mocked him. "Yeah, it must take a special kind of guy to do that. — Tijan

It meant that Diana had not waited for any explanation, however halting and imperfect, but had condemned him unheard; and this showed a much harder, far less affectionate woman than the Diana he had known or had thought he knew - a mythical person, no doubt created by himself. It had of course been evident from her letter, which made no reference to his; but he had not chosen to see the evidence and now it was absolutely forced upon his sight it made his eyes sting and tingle again. And deprived of his myth he felt extraordinarily lonely. — Patrick O'Brian

When she was little, someone gave her some weird book called The Wife Store. It was about a very lonely man who decided that he wanted to get married. So he went to the wife store, where endless women lined enormous shelves. He picked himself a wife and bought her. She was bagged up and put in a cart. He took her home. After that, the two of them went to the children store to buy a few kids.
Petey read this book over and over. Not because she liked it, but because she kept waiting for the story to change, kept waiting for the day she'd turn the page and a woman would get to the husband store. She kept waiting for justice. But, of course, the story never changed. She never got justice. If Petey were keeping one of her lists of the things she hated, she wold have to add: the fact that there was no justice. But The Wife Store was still on her shelf at home, if only to remind her that there were assholes in the world who would write such things, believe such things. — Laura Ruby

I do not know what infinite yearning possesses you, so that you are driven to a perilous, lonely search for some goal where you expect to find a final release from the spirit that torments you. I see you as the eternal pilgrim to some shrine that perhaps does not exist. I do not know to what inscrutable Nirvana you aim. Do you know yourself? Perhaps it is Truth and Freedom that you seek, and for a moment you thought that you might find release in Love. I think your tired soul sought rest in a woman's arms, and when you found no rest there you hated her. You had no pity for her, because you have no pity for yourself. And you killed her out of fear, because you trembled still at the danger you had barely escaped. — W. Somerset Maugham

Are you planning on asking my daughter's permission to ravish me as I deserve? If so, please take heed when she informs you that I am lonely and need a woman in my life. She's been nagging me for the last five years to find one."
"In your dreams, bat boy. — Katie MacAlister

We are talking 1982 here, a time when Brazil was not known for its safety. That very day, as I left Rio, a radio report came on about a woman whose glittering bejeweled hand had been macheted off as she drove through town with the window open. — Lonely Planet

And the child - your child - was born there in the midst of misery. It was a deadly place: strange, everything was strange, we women lying there were strange to each other, lonely and hating one another out of misery, the same torment in that crowded ward full of chloroform and blood, screams and groans. — Stefan Zweig

I am the most tired woman in the world. I am tired when I get up. Life requires an effort I cannot make. Please give me that heavy book. I need to put something heavy like that on top of my head. I have to place my feet under the pillows always, so as to be able to stay on earth. Otherwise I feel myself going away, going away at a tremendous speed, on account of my lightness. I know that I am dead. As soon as I utter a phrase my sincerity dies, becomes a lie whose coldness chills me. Don't say anything, because I see that you understand me, and I am afraid of your understanding. I have such a fear of finding another like myself, and such a desire to find one! I am so utterly lonely, but I also have such a fear that my isolation be broken through, and I no longer be the head and ruler of my universe. I am in great terror of your understanding by which you penetrate into my world; and then I stand revealed and I have to share my kingdom with you. — Anais Nin

I grieved three thousand times. Then I grieved for myself, a lonely woman without the honor given to the wives of the fallen. The reverence for their loss, for their children's loss. It was eloquent and grand. So moving and charged with solidarity ... On September eleventh, I faced the last moments of your father's life. I saw him in every person who tried to jump and every body they pulled from the rubble. And I saw myself as I was never allowed to be, consoled, understood, and loved. — Susan Abulhawa

Excuse me? Tonight you represent every dateless woman in this city, every woman who's about to sit down to a lonely meal of Weight Watchers past primavera she's just nuked in the microwave. Every woman who will get into bed tonight with a book or reruns of Sex and the City as her only companion. You are our shining hope ... But no pressure. — Nora Roberts

As time passed, I began to get depressed and cried a lot. It was not because of my pregnancy. Praise the Lord, I wasn't having any more morning sickness, and I remained in good health, but my emotions were taking a nosedive. In my present situation, I was so isolated, and so lonely, and when a woman is pregnant, she doesn't feel pretty any more. In fact, she often feels ugly and awkward. — Helen Goldie

The real monsters are born, not made. They are the ones who watch behind friendly faces. The ones who come for the innocent trying to steal everything they have, be it their most treasured possessions, their honour or their lives. Not because they must, not because their very existence relies on it but simply because there is a thrill in it for them. To watch a man pierced by wrath and greed die a lonely death, to watch a woman pierced by lust and anger whimper away in fear. It thrills them to watch man burn and bleed. Real monsters love to turn the sound of beautiful life into many a terrified scream. — Narayan Liu

Dear Beloved woman,
Time ... so much time has passed since my love wrote his last words for me.
And yet I remember it as if it were yesterday. I remember writing back and for the first time since I had left home I told my love what kind of darkness surrounded me here. I forgot all the sweet things my father had said to my mother when he was away. I forgot how they got her through all those long and lonely nights. — Talon P.S.

A churel is the peculiarly malignant ghost of a woman who has died in child-bed. She haunts lonely roads, her feet are turned backwards on the ankles, and she leads men to torment. — Rudyard Kipling

Murder me with bombs you poor lonely sod I will only build myself again and stronger. I am too stupid to know better I am a woman built on the wreckage of myself. — Chris Cleave

When a woman needs courage, for example, life might throw a few things at her to draw it out. When a woman needs to love herself, she might be lonely while life leaves her without external hearts to hide in. — Menna Van Praag

It was the end for me. And yet not an end. In all the years which have since elapsed she remains the woman I loved and lost, the unattainable one [ ... ] I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous man, the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the man in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable.
- Henry Miller, Stand Still like the Hummingbird (1962) — Henry Miller

Because sometimes I have a need for human warmth," I answered honestly. "Sometimes, if I can't feel something like the warmth of a woman's skin, I get so lonely I can't stand it. — Haruki Murakami

Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind. — Anne Sexton

Thus, towards the end of the eighteenth century a change came about which, if I were rewriting history, I should describe more fully and think of greater importance than the Crusades or the Wars of the Roses. The middle-class woman began to write. For if Pride and Prejudice matters, and Middlemarch and Villette and Wuthering Heights matter, then it matters far more than I can prove in an hour's discourse that women generally, and not merely the lonely aristocrat shut up in her country house among her folios and her flatterers, took to writing. — Virginia Woolf

There are three choices for a woman like me:
1) Be sad and lonely
2) Be the one who is cheated on
3) be the other woman — Jodi Picoult

With Angela drawn to the hangdog look and Malachy lonely after three months in jail, there was bound to be a knee-trmbler.
A knee-trmbler is the act itself done up against a wall, man and woman up on their toes, straining so hard their knees tremble with the excitement that's in it. — Frank McCourt

I do whatever comes my way. But I get burned out on stage. It's a lonely world. I think part of the romanticism about being on the road is you get to meet a lot of - my mom once told me, "You've probably got a woman at every port." Like I'm a pirate. Obviously she doesn't know her son that well. — Zach Galifianakis

In the struggle to remain a complete person and to love from her fullness instead of her inadequacy a woman may appear hard. She may feel her early conditioning tugging her in the direction of surrender, but she ought to remember that she was originally loved for herself; she ought to hang on to herself and not find herself nagging, helpless, irritable and trapped. Perhaps I am not old enough yet to promise that the self-reliant woman is always loved, but she cannot be lonely as long as there are people in the world who need her joy and her strength, but certainly in my experience it has always been so. Lovers who are free to go when they are restless always come back; lovers who are free to change remain interesting. The bitter animosity and obscenity of divorce is unknown where individuals have not become Siamese twins. A lover who comes to your bed of his own accord is more likely to sleep with his arms around you all night than a lover who has nowhere else to sleep. — Germaine Greer

Jesus, Dean. I don't know why you have me around with her watching your back"
"You're just jealous. But don't worry. One day you too will have your very own little Amazon."
"I'll just settle for a woman."
"If you're lonely, you can have the inflatable sex doll Blue gave me for my birthday. I don't want the two
of you to miss out on an opportunity for love."
"You didn't like her?"
"I wasn't man enough to satisfy her cravings. I'm sure you'll be different. — Marjorie M. Liu

I hear the Wind Woman running with soft, soft footsteps over the hill. I shall always think of the wind as a personality. She is a shrew when she blows from the north
a lonely seeker when she blows from the east
a laughing girl when she comes from the west
and tonight from the south a little grey fairy. — L.M. Montgomery

...he was a lonely straight male, and a lonely straight male had no equivalently forgiving Theory of Masculinism to help him out of this bind, this key to all misogynies:
To feel as if he couldn't survive without a woman made a man feel weak;
And yet, without a woman in his life, a man lost the sense of agency and difference that, for better or worse, was the foundation of his manhood. — Jonathan Franzen

Now, when it was too late, and Life's shops were closed, he regretted not having bought a certain book he had always wanted; never having gone through an earthquake, a fire, a train accident; never having seen Tatsienlu in Tibet, or heard blue magpies chattering in Chinese willows; not having spoken to that errant schoolgirl with shameless eyes, met one day in a lonely glade; not having laughed at the poor little joke of a shy ugly woman, when no one had laughed in the room; having missed trains, allusions, and opportunities; not having handed the penny he had in his pocket to that old street violinist playing to himself tremulously on a certain bleak day in a certain forgotten town. — Vladimir Nabokov

A wife, he knew, was a huge armful of responsibility, and responsibility was the disease in man. But he was lonely, and twice as lonely after leaving the woman by the graves. — Vardis Fisher

Notice that God did much more than give Adam someone so that he wouldn't be lonely. God's solution for Adam's need was to "make him a helper suitable for him." It's important here to note that "helper" does not mean "inferior person." On the contrary, in the day when Moses penned these words, to identify a woman as a "helper" ran countercultural to the common low view of women. Moses actually elevated the sense of a woman's worth and role by calling her by the same name used in other places in the Old Testament to describe God Himself (see Pss. 30:10 and 54:4). To be called a "helper" here speaks more to the simple fact that God had plans for Adam that he could not fulfill without a mate - he was incomplete. Adam needed Eve. — David Boehi

What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian. — Sitting Bull

I am happy as happiness goes, for a woman who has so many memories and who lives the lonely life of an actress. — Lillie Langtry

Though woman needs the protection of one man against his whole sex, in pioneer life, in threading her way through a lonely forest, on the highway, or in the streets of the metropolis on a dark night, she sometimes needs, too, the protection of all men against this one. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Sad truth is. . . we all end up alone on some death bed. Yeah? No way to take anybody else's place and no way we can be lying on the same one."

I was at the edge of the white-wed cloth. My shoes filled with concrete, as did my head, looking at the empty shell of what was once a woman full of wonder.

"Any way to make someone feel not so alone?" she asked.

"The only thing anyone can ever do is help someone feel a little less lonely before they get there."

"How does someone do that?"

"Memories. Help create memories. Better ones. Ones to replace the old. — S.D. Lawendowski

She's my best friend," I reminded him.
"If she is, she'll come to see what's good for you and she'll sort her shit out. If she's a different kind of woman, she won't. Instead, she'll see green and won't clue in that men do not want high maintenance drama queens so much they steer well clear and until she shifts that shit outta her life, it's gonna be a lonely one. Unlike her friend who sees a man drinking outta her milk jug, processes that it's highly unlikely she's gonna break him of that habit seein' as he's forty-five and still does it and has since he was a kid, lets it go and moves on all in the expanse of about a second instead of throwing a shit fit about it which gets her nowhere, is a waste of energy and leaves both involved feeling like garbage."
Well, I had to admit, all that was interesting and insightful and weirdly mature. — Kristen Ashley

I'd like to hope you end up a miserable, lonely woman. But actually, I hope you have children one day, Ellie Haworth. Then you'll know how it feels to be vulnerable. And to have to fight, to be constantly vigilant, just to make sure your children get to grow up with a father. — Jojo Moyes

I thought about breakups, how difficult they were, but then usually it was only after you broke up with one woman that you met another. I had to taste women in order to really know them, to get inside of them. I could invent men in my mind because I was one, but women, for me, were almost impossible to fictionalize without first knowing them. So I explored them as best I could and I found human beings inside. The writing was only a residue. A man didn't have to have a woman in order to feel as real as he could feel, but it was good if he knew a few. Then when the affair went wrong he'd feel what it was like to be truly lonely and crazed, and thus know what he must face, finally, when his own end came. — Charles Bukowski

I speculate, briefly, on how different the world would be if it were run by women. In that world, if you were a lonely, horny woman - as I am. As I always am- you'd see Blu-tacked postcards by Soho doorways that read 'Nice man in cardigan, 24, will talk to you about The Smiths whilst making you cheese-on-toast+come to parties with you. Apply within'. — Caitlin Moran

All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely pre-ambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasent life of it, in despite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was - a woman. — Washington Irving

He was thirty-one now, not too old, but old enough to be lonely. He hadn't dated since he'd been back here, hadn't met anyone who remotely interested him. It was his own fault, he knew. There was something that kept a distance between him and any woman who started to get close, something he wasn't sure he could change even if he tried. And sometimes in the moments right before sleep came, he wondered if he was destined to be alone forever. — Nicholas Sparks

For a long time, she sat and saw.
She had seen her brother die with one eye open, on still in a dream. She had said goodbye to her mother and imagined her lonely wait for a train back home to oblivion. A woman of wire had laid herself down, her scream traveling the street, till it fell sideways like a rolling coin starved of momentum. A young man was hung by a rope made of Stalingrad snow. She had watched a bomber pilot die in a metal case. She had seen a Jewish man who had twice given her the most beautiful pages of her life marched to a concentration camp. And at the center of all of it, she saw the Fuhrer shouting his words and passing them around.
Those images were the world, and it stewed in her as she sat with the lovely books and their manicured titles. It brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words. — Markus Zusak

A LONELY WOMAN IS a dangerous woman." Doktor Messerli spoke with grave sincerity. "A lonely woman is a bored woman. Bored women act on impulse. — Jill Alexander Essbaum