...I realized that I knew less about loneliness than I had thought - and much less than I would know when he went away.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the complexities of loneliness and the deeper understanding one gains through relationships.
In this quote, Octavia Butler highlights the irony of understanding loneliness. Initially, the speaker believed they comprehended what loneliness meant, but through the experience of a relationship, they realized that true loneliness is far more profound than they had anticipated. The speaker acknowledges that the impending absence of a significant person will deepen their understanding of solitude, suggesting that relationships force us to confront and understand our feelings in ways we might not expect.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of connection, one might say, 'As Octavia Butler wisely observed, we often know less about loneliness than we think.'
What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way.
Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.
Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.
There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.
You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.
"Don't you want to join us?" I was recently asked by an acquaintance when he ran across me alone after midnight in a coffeehouse that was already almost deserted. "No, I don't," I said.
Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence. It is hard to find. In its presence we can remember something beyond the moment, a strength on which to build a life. Silence is a place of great power and healing.
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
I'm achingly aware of my own limitations as both part of the human race and as an individual. I'm just, casting this out that, maybe, I'm not so perfect as is the affront I oft put on. After all, the lyric is 'I wish I was special'. I truly just want to be loved and accepted, I think, like all humans.
Its the most breathtakingly ironic things about living: the fact that we are all-identical twins included-alone. Singular. And yet what we seek-what saves us-is our connection to others.
What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.
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