"I live alone," he said simply. "I live in the open. I hear the waves at night and see the black patterns of the pine boughs against the sky. With sound and silence and color and solitude, of course I see visions. Anyone would.""But you don't believe in them?" Doc asked hopefully."I don't find it a matter for belief or disbelief," the seer said. "You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks into the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself everytime that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it? Don't you see visions?""No," said Doc."

Solitude, Vision, Nature, Belief

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"I live alone," he said simply. "I live in the open. I hear the waves at night and see the black patterns of the pine boughs against the sky. With sound and silence and color and solitude, of course I see visions. Anyone would.""But you don't believe in them?" Doc asked hopefully."I don't find it a matter for belief or disbelief," the seer said. "You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks into the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself everytime that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it? Don't you see visions?""No," said Doc."

Exlpore more Solitude quotes

"I knew this feeling, the 2 a.m. loneliness that I'd practically invented."

Sarah Dessen, American Author

Solitude, Loneliness, Night, Feeling, Isolation

"I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."

Henry David Thoreau, American Author

Solitude, Peace, Truth, Contentment

"That illusion of a world so shaped that it echoes every groan, of human beings so tied together by common needs and fears that a twitch at one wrist jerks another, where however strange your experience other people have had it too, where however far you travel in your own mind someone has been there before you - - is all an illusion. We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable."

Virginia Woolf, British Author

Solitude, Illusion, Truth, Experience

"This was not my moment to be seeking romance and (as day follows night) to further complicate my already knotty life. This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude."

Elizabeth Gilbert, American Novelist

Solitude, Peace, Healing, Self

"While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace."

Virginia Woolf, British Author

Solitude, Obscurity, Freedom, Mind, Peace

"And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it."

Rainer Maria Rilke, German Poet

Solitude, Confusion, Freedom, Reflection

"An excellent man he has no enemies and none of his friends like him."

Oscar Wilde, Irish Dramatist

Solitude, Friends, Loneliness, Irony, Goodness

"I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company."

Henry Miller, American Author

Solitude, Shame, Despair, Self

"Sickness awakens sadness sleeps- Moments of aloneness results into peace."

Santosh Kalwar, Nepalese Poet

Solitude, Sadness, Peace, Healing

"One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude."

Carl Sandburg, American Poet

Solitude, America

Explore more quotes by John Steinbeck

"Well, we all got to make a livin'.""Yeah," Tom said. "On'y I wisht they was some way to make her 'thout takin' her away from somebody else."

Life

"We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it."

Time

"No one wants advice - only corroboration."

Advice

"If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones."

People

"I've lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate."

Travel

"Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play."

Writing

"I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature."

Literature

"Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it."

Man

"Strength and success - they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught."

Power

"In March the soft rains continued, and each storm waited courteously until its predecessor sunk beneath the ground."

Nature