Empty Rooms Quotes

• An optimist is a driver who thinks that empty space at the curb won't have a hydrant beside it.

  Jules Renard

  Attitude, Thinking, Space

  55 Copy quote

• In a full heart there is room for everything, and in an empty heart there is room for nothing.

  Antonio Porchia

  Broken Heart, Wise, Appreciation

  Antonio Porchia (2006). “Voces reunidas”, Pre Textos Ed

  68 Copy quote

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• An empty room is a story waiting to happen, and you are the author.

  Charlotte Moss

  Waiting, Stories, Happens

  8 Copy quote

• Passion... it lies in all of us. Sleeping, waiting, and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir, open its jaws, and howl. It speaks to us, guides us... passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have?

  Joss Whedon

  Lying, Sleep, Passion

  "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". www.imdb.com. 1997-2003.

  18 Copy quote

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• Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up - some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal.

  Harper Lee

  Heart, Darkness, Entering

  16 Copy quote

• A thousand plastic flowers don't make a desert bloom. A thousand empty faces don't fill an empty room".

  Frederick Salomon Perls

  Flower, Desert, Faces

  15 Copy quote

• When the mind's an empty room
  The clear days come.

  Wendell Berry

  Mind, Clear Day, Rooms

  Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.193, Counterpoint Press

  3 Copy quote

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• Hysteria is impossible without an audience. Panicking by yourself is the same as laughing alone in an empty room. You feel really silly.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Silly, Hysteria, Laughing

  Chuck Palahniuk (2011). “Invisible Monsters: A Novel”, p.50, W. W. Norton & Company

  6 Copy quote

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• We're all influenced by everything unless we're locked in an empty room.

  Nicolas Roeg

  Rooms, Empty, Locked

  "Nicolas Roeg: 'I don't want to be ahead of my time'". Interview with Ryan Gilbey, www.theguardian.com. March 10, 2011.

  3 Copy quote

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• I play in a lot of empty rooms.

  Colin Hay

  Play, Rooms, Empty

  3 Copy quote

• Solitude is a condition of peace that stands in direct opposition to loneliness. Loneliness is like sitting in an empty room and being aware of the space around you. It is a condition of separateness. Solitude is becoming one with the space around you. It is a condition of union. loneliness is small, solitude is large. loneliness closes in around you; solitude expands toward the infinite. loneliness has its roots in words, in an internal conversation that nodbody answers; solitude has it's roots in the great silence of eternity.

  Kent Nerburn

  Loneliness, Being Alone, Becoming One

  Kent Nerburn (2010). “Simple Truths: Clear and Simple Guidance on the Big Issues in Life”, p.55, New World Library

  39 Copy quote

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• The Internet is a perfect diversion from learning... it opens many doors that lead to empty rooms.

  Clifford Stoll

  Doors, Perfect, Internet

  12 Copy quote

• There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Dream, Communication, Men

  Jean Baudrillard (1989). “America”, p.50, Verso

  8 Copy quote

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• I think you can photograph a certain sliver of human presence in its absence... images taken in the empty rooms, the marks left on the walls, disappearing shadows, etc.

  Mona Kuhn

  Wall, Taken, Thinking

  5 Copy quote

• All my life I have arrived early only to find myself standing self-consciously on a corner, outside a door, in an empty room, but the closer I get to death the earlier I arrive, the longer I am content to wait, perhaps to give myself the false sensation that there is too much time rather than not enough.

  Nicole Krauss

  Doors, Self, Giving

  Nicole Krauss (2011). “Great House: A Novel”, p.259, W. W. Norton & Company

  5 Copy quote

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• This is how most stories end in the hospital. Not with crash carts and sirens and electric shocks to the chest, but with an empty room, a crisp white bed, silence.

  Jacob M. Appel

  Electric Shock, White, Silence

  Jacob M. Appel (2014). “Phoning Home: Essays”, p.62, Univ of South Carolina Press

  3 Copy quote

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• The telephone conversation is, by its very nature, reactive, not reflective. Immediacy is its prime virtue. ... The letter, written in absorbed solitude, is an act of faith: it assumes the presence of humanity: world and self are generated from within: loneliness is courted, not feared. To write a letter is to be alone with my thoughts in the conjured presence of another person. I keep myself imaginative company. I occupy the empty room.

  Vivian Gornick

  Loneliness, Writing, Self

  8 Copy quote

• I only really understand myself, what I'm really thinking and feelings, when I've talked it over with my circle of female friends. When days go by without that connection, I feel like a radio playing in an empty room.

  Anna Quindlen

  Thinking, Circles, Feelings

  3 Copy quote

• Catherine Land liked the beginnings of things. The pure white possibility of the empty room, the first kiss, the first swipe at larceny. And endings, she liked endings, too. The drama of the smashing glass, the dead bird, the tearful goodbye, the last awful word which could never be unsaid or unremembered.
  It was the middles that gave her pause. This, for all its forward momentum, this was a middle. The beginnings were sweet, the endings usually bitter, but the middles were only the tightrope you walked between the one and the other. No more than that.

  Robert Goolrick

  Goodbye, Sweet, Drama

  3 Copy quote

• Without a sense of place the work is often reduced to a cry of voices in empty rooms, a literature of the self, at its best poetic music; at its worst a thin gruel of the ego.

  William Kennedy

  Voice, Self, House

  11 Copy quote

• Separation anxiety is assuaged by constant connection. Young people announce every detail of their lives on services like Twitter not to show off, but to avoid the closed door at bedtime, the empty room, the screaming vacuum of an isolated mind.

  Jaron Lanier

  Doors, People, Anxiety

  Jaron Lanier (2010). “You Are Not a Gadget”, p.180, Vintage

  3 Copy quote

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• Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping... waiting... and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir... open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us... guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love... the clarity of hatred... the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we'd be truly dead.

  Joss Whedon

  Life, Hurt, Peace

  "Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Passion)". TV Series, www.imdb.com. 1998.

  112 Copy quote

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• They wordlessly excused each other for not loving each other as much as they had planned to. There were empty rooms in the house where they had meant to put their love, and they worked together to fill these rooms with midcentury modern furniture. ("Birthmark").

  Miranda July

  House, Together, Furniture

  Miranda July (2008). “No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories”, p.173, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

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• Now...in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, ipods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.

  Harper Lee

  Book, Phones, Cells

  12 Copy quote

• I'll be your mess,you be mine That was the deal that we had signed I bought a hazmat suit to clean up your waste Gas masks,gloves,to keep us safe But now i'm alone in an empty room Staring down immaculate doom "Messy

  Gayle Forman

  Gloves, Safe, Waste

  FaceBook post by Gayle Forman from Jul 15, 2015

  6 Copy quote

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