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 . . . LONELINESS see "INDIVIDUALITY" for related links see "UNHAPPINESS" for related links Please fence me in baby the world's too big out here and I don't like it without you. --Humphrey Bogart (18991957) American actor. Telegram to Lauren Bacall, in Lauren Bacall _By Myself_ [1978]. People who are lonely are those who do not know what to do with the time when they are alone. --Quentin Crisp [Denis Pratt] (19081999) English writer. _Sunday Telegraph_ [28 September 1999] What loneliness is more lonely than distrust? --George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] (18191880) English novelist. _Middlemarch_ [1871], Book 8, Chapter 44 America is said to have the highest per capita boredom of any spot on earth! We know that because we have the greatest number of artificial amusements of any country. People have become so empty that they can't even entertain themselves. They have to pay other people to amuse them, to make them laugh, to try to make them feel warm and happy and comfortable for a few minutes, to try to lose that awful, frightening, hollow feeling-- that terrible, dreaded feeling of being lost and alone. --Billy Graham (1918 ) American Christian evangelist. - Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate. --Germaine Greer (1939 ) Australian feminist. _The Female Eunuch_ [1970], "Security" Many a housewife staring at the back of her husband's newspapers, or listening to his breathing in bed is lonelier than any spinster in a rented room. --Germaine Greer (1939 ) Australian feminist. _The Female Eunuch_ [1970] - Lonely people talking to each other can make each other lonelier. --Lillian Hellman (19051984) American dramatist. _The Autumn Garden_ [1951], act I - In the wee small hours of the morning, While the whole wide world is fast asleep, You lie awake and think about the girl And never even think of counting sheep. When your lonely heart has learned its lesson, You'd be hers if only she would call. In the wee small hours of the morning, That's the time you miss her most of all. --Bob Hilliard (19181971) American lyricist. "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning" [1955 song] {music by David Mann} - There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. --Eric Hoffer (19021983) American longshoreman, philosopher, and author who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1982. _The Passionate State of Mind: And Other Aphorisms_ [1954] Little boys may be an intolerable nuisance; but when they are not there we regret them, we find ourselves homesick for their very intolerableness. --Aldous Huxley (18941963) English novelist {grandson of T.H. Huxley}. _Beyond the Mexique Bay_ I see no comfort in outliving one's friends, and remaining a mere monument of the times which are past. --Thomas Jefferson (17431826) American statesman and president [1801-1809]. In a letter to Charles Pinckney [3 September 1816]. - It's nine o'clock on a Saturday, The regular crowd shuffles in. There's an old man sitting next to me, Makin' love to his tonic and gin. He says, 'Son can you play me a memory, I'm not really sure how it goes, But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete, When I wore a younger man's clothes.' Sing us a song, you're the piano man, Sing us a song tonight. Well, we're all in the mood for a melody, And you've got us feelin' alright. Now John at the bar is a friend of mine, He gets me my drinks for free. And he's quick with a joke or to light up your smoke, But there's someplace that he'd rather be. He says, 'Bill, I believe this is killing me,' As the smile ran away from his face. 'Well I'm sure that I could be a movie star, If I could get out of this place.' Sing us a song, you're the piano man, Sing us a song tonight. Well, we're all in the mood for a melody, And you've got us feelin' alright. Now Paul is a real estate novelist, Who never had time for a wife. And he's talking with Davy who's still in the navy, And probably will be for life. And the waitress is practicing politics, As the businessmen slowly get stoned; Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness, But it's better than drinking alone. [. . . ] --Billy Joel (William Martin Joel) (1949 ) American pianist, singer, and songwriter. "Piano Man" [1973 song] - - If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely. --Carl Gustav Jung (18751961) Swiss psychologist. _Erinnerungen, Trδume, Gedanken_ [1962] (Memories, Dreams, Reflections) "Retrospect" Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible. --Carl Gustav Jung (18751961) Swiss psychologist. - How some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. --Charles Lamb (17751834) English essayist. _Old Familiar Faces_ [1798] - ...it is not through sin that he opposes God. The Devil's strategy for our times is to make trivial human existence and to isolate us from one another while creating the delusion that the reasons are time pressures, work demands, or economic anxieties. --C.S. [Clive Staples] Lewis (18981963) British scholar and novelist. & see: I know of no more potent killer than isolation. There is no more destructive influence on physical and mental health than the isolation of you from me and of us from them. It has been shown to be a central agent in the etiology of depression, paranoia, schizophrenia, rape, suicide, mass murder, and a wide variety of disease states.... The devil's strategy for our times is to trivialize human existence and to isolate us from one another while creating the delusion that the reasons are time pressures, work demands, or economic anxieties. --Philip G. Zimbardo (1933 ) American psychologist. "The Age of Indifference" _Psychology Today_ [30 August 1980] - 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 the 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 Schulz (19222000) American cartoonist. _You Don't Look 35, Charlie Brown_ Loneliness is the most terrible poverty. --Mother Teresa (19101997) Roman Catholic nun and missionary. Language has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone, and the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone. --Paul Johannes Tillich (18861965) German-born American theologian. "The Eternal Now" [1963] Be good and you will be lonesome. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. Holographed caption under frontispiece photograph of the author in _Following the Equator_ [1897]. Anytime I see a person fleeing from reason and into religion, I think to myself, there goes a person who cannot stand being so goddamned lonely anymore. --Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (19222007) American novelist and short-story writer. Hear that lonesome whipporwhill; It sounds to blue to fly. The midnight train is whining low. I'm so lonesome I could cry. --Hank Williams (19231953) American songwriter and singer of country music. "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" [1942] - The mailman passes by, And I just wonder why He never stops to ring my front doorbell. There's not a single line from that dear old love of mine, No, not a word since I last heard "Farewell. " I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter And make believe it came from you. I'm gonna write words, oh, so sweet, They're gonna knock me off my feet. A lot of kisses on the bottom, I'll be glad I got' em. I'm gonna smile and say, "I hope you're feeling better," And close "with love" the way you do. I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter, And make believe it came from you. --Joe Young (18891939) American songwriter. "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter" [1935 song] sung by Fats Waller; music by Fred E. Ahlert.   LONERS . . see "INDIVIDUALITY" for related links Strength of numbers is the delight of the timid. The valiant in spirit glory in fighting alone. --Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian statesman and leader of the nationalistic movement against British rule, (In Richard Attenborough's _The Words of Gandhi_ [1982], "Nonviolence") ----- maverick (noun) ['mζ-vκr-ik] An orphan calf or other animal that leaves the pack or herd. An outsider, an iconoclast or self-oriented person who lives by his or her own rules, often perceived as a danger or threat. . . see "COMMUNICATION" for related links They think to little who talk to much. --John Dryden (1631-1700) English poet, critic, and dramatist Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it. --Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet ^^ I was reminded of the after-dinner speaker who went on and on until a guest was so fed up that he picked up a bottle and shied it at the speaker's head. Unfortunately it missed the speaker and hit a little man sitting beside him, knocking him out. Immediately people rushed to revive him, and when he eventually came round, he was heard to say: "Please hit me again. I can still hear him." --_The Best After-Dinner Stories_, selected and introduced by Tim Heald ^^ Express yourself completely, then keep quiet. --Lao-tzu (c. 6th cent. B.C.) the first philosopher of Chinese Taoism and alleged author of the _Tao-te Ching_ (Chinese: Classic of the Way of Power) People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. --Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) French philosopher and novelist, _Emile_ [1762] Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers. There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate. If you are civil to the voluble, they will abuse your patience; if brusque, your character. --Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) Anglo-Irish poet and satirist I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time and prevents arguments. --Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Anglo-Irish playwright and poet, _The Remarkable Rocket_ And he goes through life, his mouth open, and his mind closed. --Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Anglo-Irish playwright and poet ----- circumlocution sir-kuhm-loh-KYOO-shuhn, noun: The use of many words to express an idea that might be expressed by few; indirect or roundabout language. logorrhea law-guh-REE-uh, noun: Excessive talkativeness or wordiness. pleonasm PLEE-uh-naz-uhm, noun: The use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; as, "I saw it with my own eyes." Synonyms: redundancy, circumlocution, tautology, periphrasis. verbose vuhr-BOHS, adjective: Abounding in words; using or containing more words than are necessary; tedious by an excess of words; wordy; as, "a verbose speaker; a verbose argument."  LOS ANGELES . . see "PLACES" for related links Coming from England, of course, it was extraordinary. There we were, renting a Mustang convertible and driving down Sunset, picking up beautiful blonde girls. I mean, it was a fairly decent introduction to _anywhere_! If anything, I got an overly golden impression of Los Angeles at that point. --Peter Asher One of the San Francisco papers sponsored a "Why I Hate L.A. In A Thousand Words Or Less" contest. The winner, letting success go to his head, moved down to West Hollywood, where he's been pitching screenplays ever since. --Berton Averre Musician and guitarist in the group "The Knack," (In Jon Winokur's _War Between the State_ [2004], "Los Angeles vs. San Francisco") I used to like this town. Los Angeles was just a big dry sunny place with ugly homes and no style. Now we've got the big money, the sharp shooters, the percentage workers, the fast-dollar boys, the hoodlums out of New York and Chicago...the flashy restaurants and nightclubs they run...the riffraff of a big hard-boiled city with no more personality than a paper cup. --"Philip Marlowe" in Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) _The Little Sister_ Los Angeles is a place that operates on hope and there is still something pure about that. It helps one see through the dirty air. Vegas is different . . . It operates on desire and on that road is ultimate heartbreak. --Michael Connelly (1956- ) American author of detective novels _The Narrows_ [2004], pp. 36-37 I'd move to Los Angeles if Australia and New Zealand were swallowed up by a huge tidal wave, if there was a bubonic plague in Europe, and if the continent of Africa disappeared from some Martian attack. --Russell Crowe (1964- ) New Zealand-born film actor Some years ago, not long after I moved to Los Angeles from New York, I attended a television industry party. When a man asked my profession, I told him that I was a writer. He sipped his rink. "Half-hour or hour?" he inquired. There was a long silence. "Lifelong," I replied. --Carol Muske Dukes I had been warned many times by American friends that I must expect to find a mushroom town filled to overflowing with exquisitely beautiful young ladies. My first impression was that Los Angeles is a toadstool town filled to overflowing with centenarians...I discovered afterwards, of course, that these are the Middle-Westerners, who have come to Los Angeles to die and find that it is a good deal harder than they expected. --A. G. Macdonell, _A Visit to America_ [1935] - Los Angeles is famous for three things: first as a city where more suckers are strung, and more wallets are extracted than in any other city of like size in America. Second as a city where the marriage relation is made ridiculous and where sex-stimulation is at the maximum. Third as a city where there are more religious vagaries, more cults and isms, more psychic manifestations and delusions, more commericialized miracles, and more flagrant deceptions in the name of the gentle child Jesus, than in any other city, possibly, in the entire world. Los Angeles is fertile soil for every kind of imposter that the face of the earth has been cursed by. The suckers all come here sooner or later, and the whole twelve months is open season. --_Bob Schuler's Magazine_, c. 1925, quoted H. L. Mencken, _Americana_ [1925] - The violet hush of twilight was descending over Los Angeles as my hostess, Violet Hush, and I left its suburbs headed towards Hollywood. In the distance a glow of huge piles of burning motion-picture scripts lit up the sky. The crisp tang of frying writers and directors whetted my appetite. How good it was to be alive, I thought, inhaling deep lungfuls of carbon monoxide. --S.J. [Sidney Joseph] Perelman (1904-1979) American humorist and author, _Strictly from Hunger_ - Paradise, with a lobotomy. --Neil Simon (1927- ) American playwright _California Suite_ - Being a newspaperman myself, I think I understand this evidently irresistible urge that Eastern journalists have to throw another cliche at Los Angeles. They are sent out here on expense accounts to write stories that will please their editors, and their editors want to be told that Los Angeles is a dreadful place, so they will feel better about living in New York or Boston or Philadelphia, especially in February. The reporter settles into the Beverly Hills Hotel in an ambience of cantaloupe and is taken out to Malibu on his first night to a freestyle moonlit party where he is intoxicated by palatable California wines and surprisingly literate and friendly natives, including relays of suntanned beach girls. The next morning he wakes up in his hotel room with his New England conscience and a hangover and feels guilty for having had such a wonderful time. He looks out his window and can't see the empire State building and is homesick. He calls room service and orders a Bloody Mary to exorcise his anomie, and while waiting for it. . . he pecks out a few hundred words to reassure the folks back home that Nathanael West was right--that their correspondent is in the capital of kitsch at this very moment, wasting his talent away among Rotarians and retired chiropractors and mindless TV actresses in a plastic wasteland. --Jack Smith (In Jon Winokur's _War Between the State_ [2004], "New York") ^ ...the Musso & Frank Grill in Hollywood, founded in 1919, the takeoff year of twentieth-century Los Angeles. Restaurateur Joseph Musso had moved to the city in 1916 from Oregon when that state banished liquor service in restaurants. Three years later, with two other partners, one of them named Frank Toulet, he opened the Musso & Frank Grill. Just as the opening of Delmonico's prefigured the rise of New York to preeminence, so too did the opening of the Musso & Frank Grill coincide with the transformation of Los Angeles from a nice but negligible southwestern town to an important American city that, because of the film industry, had been jump-started into international recognition. These were the years in which Los Angeles absorbed more than a million and a half new residents, when it annexed the San Fernando Valley, San Pedro/Wilmington, Watts, and Venice, opened the Miracle Mile, constructed the Coliseum, the Biltmore Hotel, the City Hall, the Central Library, the Hollywood Bowl, the campuses of USC and UCLA. These were the years in which two formative industries - aviation and motion pictures - centralized themselves in the City of Angels and its immediate suburbs. Within one decade, certainly two decades, after Musso & Frank opened, Los Angeles had become, in Los Angeles Times columnist Harry Carr's terms, America's City of Dreams: an urban tabula rasa onto which, increasingly, Americans and all moviegoing peoples were projecting their longings and centering their subliminal aspirations for glamour and a better life. [ . . . ] Today, sixty, nearly seventy, years later, the Musso & Frank Grill remains a throwback to this earlier era. The decor has changed little, if at all, since the 1920s, especially the great mahogany booths and red leather banquettes in the original dining room, where customers also dine at a long counter, reading Variety or the racing form. Red-jacketed waiters are middle-aged or older and are totally devoid, as Southern California restaurant critic Orlando Ramirez points out, of that "Hi-my-name-isJason- and-I'll-be-your-server-tonight" greeting, usually uttered by aspiring-actor waiters in other Los Angeles bistros. These gentlemen and their few female counterparts are professional waiters in the old sense of the word (meaning full-time and for real), and they sustain the kind of hauteur one frequently encounters in waiters and waitresses working in historic restaurants, from Sam's in San Francisco to Durgin Park in Boston. The food they serve is equally old-fashioned. J. M. Fenster describes the Musso & Frank Grill as "a veritable safe house in the midst of trendy California cuisine. There is nary a poppy seed in sight or a blade of lemongrass. Instead, there is beef stroganoff. There are also veal scallopine, liver and onions, Welsh rarebit, and other dishes long past mere trends." To this list, one might also add such other Musso & Frank favorites as corned beef and cabbage, oyster stew, lamb kidneys, a three-inch-thick prime rib, broiled squab with bacon, pork and lamb chops, and smoked tongue. The tavern/roadhouse dimension of the Musso & Frank Grill is evident in its long-very long-bar where martinis, Manhattans, Rob Roys, stingers, and other very direct and very alcoholic drinks have remained in fashion since the repeal of Prohibition. Its market origins are evident in its usually adequate offerings of fresh fish as well as red meat. Hollywood's connection to New York can be detected in huge servings of Lindy's-style cheesecake. The spirit of Los Angeles in the 1920s, the Los Angeles of Aimee Semple McPherson and the Folks, is evident in the fact that Musso & Frank still serves Postum as well as good coffee and Jell-O. --Kevin Starr "The Musso & Frank Grill in Hollywood" _American Places: Encounters with History_ [2000] ^ - Once in Los Angeles, they [midwestern retirees] discover the sunshine isn't enough. They get tired of oranges, even of avocado pears and passion fruit. Nothing happens. They don't know what to do with their time. . . .What else is there? They watch the waves come in at Venice. There wasn't any ocean where most of them came from, but after you've seen one wave, you've seen them all. The same is true of the airplanes at Glendale. If only a plane would crash once in a while so they could watch the passengers being consumed in a 'holocaust of flame,' as the newspapers put it. But the planes never crash. --Nathaniel West [Nathan Wallenstein Weinstein] (1903-1940) American author and screenwriter, [in 1933] . . see: "DEFEAT" see: "FAILURE" - "Better finish our chess-game," I said. "Your move." I had forgotten my elegant trap, took me as long to remember what it was as it took her to consider her position and move. She did not make the pawn advance that was essential for her survival. I was sad and delighted. At least she would see my marvelous satin trap spring shut. That's what learning is, after all, I thought, not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning. Even so, part of me stayed sad for her. My queen moved and lifted her knight from the board, even though the knight was guarded. Now her pawn would take my queen, for the sacrifice. Go ahead and take the queen, you little devil, enjoy it while you can. Her pawn did not take my queen. Instead, after a moment, her bishop flew from one corner of the board to the other, her night-blue eyes watched mine for response. "Checkmate," she whispered. I turned to ash, unbelieving. Then studied what she had done, reached for my notebook and wrote half a page. "What did you write?" "A nice new thought," I said. "That's what learning is, after all: not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning." --Richard Bach (1936- ) American writer. _The Bridge Across Forever_ [1984], Chapter 15 - How is the mighty fallen[.] --Bible Apocrypha, I Maccabees 9:21 He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all. --Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) Spanish novelist. The only things in which we can be said to have any property are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken away by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world. --C.C. Colton (1780-1832) English clergyman and writer. Wise men never sit and wail their loss, but cheerily seek how to redress their harms. --William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist. _King Henry VI_ [1590-1591] Though last not least. --Edmund Spenser (1552/53-1599) English poet. _Colin Clouts Come Home Again_ [1595] Someone asked me, as I came in, down on the street, how I felt and I was reminded of a story that a fellow townsman of ours used to tell--Abraham Lincoln. They asked him how he felt once after an unsuccessful election. He said he felt like a little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. He said that he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh. --Adlai E. Stevenson (1900-1965) American Democratic politician. Commenting on his defeat in the presidential election [5 November 1952]. The people have spoken--the bastards! --Dick Tuck, After losing his campaign for the California state legislature. In "Playboy" [1974]. ;void(0)) LOUISIANA . . see "PLACES" for related links In Louisiana, the live-oak is the king of the forest, and the magnolia is its queen; and there is nothing more delightful to one who is fond of the country than to sit under them on a clear, calm spring morning like this. --Joseph Jefferson (1829-1905) American actor, _The Autobiography of Joseph Jefferson_ [1917 ed.] As a society, we're a banana republic. What we ought to do is declare bankruptcy, secede from the union and declare ourselves a banana republic and file for foreign aid. We're just about as illiterate and as progressive as a Latin American country. --Kevin Reilly (1937- ) American computer scientist, quoted in the Louisiana State University "Daily Reveille" [18 June 1985] end page | KARMA - KENTUCKY | KINDNESS | KILL - KU KLUX KLAN | KNOWLEDGE | LABELS - LAS VEGAS | LANGUAGE | LATIN - LAUGHTER | LAW (THE) - LAWYERS | LAZINESS - LEGACIES | LEISURE - LIBERALS | LIBERTY - LIES | LIFE | LIFESTYLE - LIMITATIONS | LINCOLN (ABRAHAM) - LITTERING | LIVE - LONDON | LONELINESS - LOUISIANA | LOVE - PAGE 1 (A-L) | LOVE - PAGE 2 (M-Z) | LOVE & MARRIAGE - LYNCHING | | H | I - J | K - L | M | N - O | P - Q | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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