“It began to occur to me that the whole story of love might be nothing more than a wicked lie; that simply sleeping beside another body night after night gives no express right of entry to the interior world of… — Olivia Laing Copy Share Image
“Not so long ago, I spent a period in New York City, that teeming island of gneiss and concrete and glass, inhabiting loneliness on… — Olivia Laing Copy Share Image
“There is no possibility of permanent tenancy on this circling planet. It isn’t part of the deal.” — Olivia Laing Copy Share Image
“they’d even met, he recommended him to his own editor at Scribner, Max Perkins, suggesting Max sign up this promising young” — Olivia Laing Copy Share Image
“The revelation of loneliness, the omnipresent, unanswerable feeling that I was in a state of lack, that I didn't have what people were supposed… — Olivia Laing Copy Share Image
“The city reveals itself as a set of cells, a hundred thousand windows, some darkened and some flooded with green or white or golden… — Olivia Laing Copy Share Image
“But already this isn't quite right. The first apartment I had wasn't on the island at all. It was in Brooklyn Heights, a few… — Olivia Laing Copy Share Image
“Loneliness is a very special place. It isn’t always easy to see the truth of Wilson’s statement, but over the course of my travels… — Olivia Laing Copy Share Image
“When he changed his mind, very suddenly, expressing increasingly grave reservations into a series of hotel phones, I found myself adrift, stunned by the… — Olivia Laing Copy Share Image
“Sometimes, all you need is permission to feel. Sometimes, what causes the most pain is actually the attempt to resist feeling, or the shame… — Olivia Laing Copy Share Image
“Physically, Echo Spring is nothing more than a nickname for a liquor cabinet, drawn from the brand of bourbon it contains.” — Olivia Laing Copy Share Image
“As long as Frank was well, I was happy,’ he wrote in Memoirs. ‘He had a gift for creating a life and, when he… — Olivia Laing Copy Share Image
“If I could have put what I was feeling into words, the words would have been an infant's wail: I don't want to be… — Olivia Laing Copy Share Image
“Cities can be lonely places, and in admitting this we see that loneliness doesn't necessarily require physical solitude, but rather an absence or paucity… — Olivia Laing Copy Share Image
“I was working, but I didn't have anything like enough to do, and the bad times came in the evenings, when I went back… — Olivia Laing Copy Share Image
