QuoteProject
Loneliness is like starvation: you don't realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat.
Joyce Carol Oates
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Loneliness can go unnoticed until one finds meaningful connection, similar to recognizing hunger only when eating.

Joyce Carol Oates draws a poignant comparison between loneliness and starvation, emphasizing how people often underestimate the depth of their emotional needs. Just as one might not recognize physical hunger until consuming food, individuals may not realize their longing for connection and companionship until they actively seek it. This metaphor highlights the importance of relationships in fulfilling the emotional void that loneliness creates.

Themes

LonelinessRelationshipsHungerConnectionEmotion

In practice

Example use cases

During a speech on mental health awareness, one might use this quote to illustrate the importance of community.

More from Joyce Carol Oates

Of the widow's countless death-duties there is really just one that matters: on the first anniversary of her husband's death the widow should think I kept myself alive.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
I never really knew I wanted to 'be' a writer, but I was always writing from a very young age. It became more conscious as an ideal when I was in my twenties.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
I'm drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and girlhood were spent in upstate New York, in the country north of Buffalo and West of Rochester. So this part of New York state is very familiar to me and, with its economic difficulties, has become emblematic of much of American life.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own stories, so I hope that my writing won't be affected too much by my personal life.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.
Joyce Carol OatesRead

Similar quotes

A peevish self-willed harlotry it is. *She’s a stubborn little brat.*
William ShakespeareRead
The first effect marriage had on me was to increase my lack of interest in sex.... Actually our marriage was a sort of friendship with sexual privileges.
Marilyn MonroeRead
Albert King wasn't my brother in blood, but he sure was my brother in Blues
B. B. KingRead
I've always loved independent women, outspoken women, eccentric women, funny women, flawed women. When someone says about a woman, 'I'm sorry, that's just wrong,' I tend to think she must be doing something right.
Diane KeatonRead
Forget sex or politics or religion, loneliness is the subject that clears out a room.
Douglas CouplandRead
Please think of me like an endangered species and just observe me quietly from far away. If you try to talk to me or touch me casually, I may get intimidated and bite you. So please be careful.
Haruki MurakamiRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.