I saw Ellen and my knees were weak. It was amazing. And it was very hard for me to get her out of my mind after that. Then when I saw her that night we started talking and that's that.

I had a friend whose family had dinner together. The mother would tuck you in at night and make breakfast in the morning. They even had a spare bike for a friend. It just seemed so amazing to me.

I like to have a massage therapist come to my house get a massage take a bath go to bed. That's a perfect night alone for me.

The next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel Mississippi.

On the stage you alone hold the key and on the night you have to trust that the director has inspired you enough to take the material and run with it.

All my fans tell me what a glamorous life I have but I tell them how hard I work and how many nights I spend alone with my dogs eating chicken pot pie in my bedroom.

Now on nights that I can't sleep I play video games alone until the morning.

Without strength and courage it's really hard to perform at the highest levels of international figure skating because you're alone on the ice and you only have seven minutes over two nights to prove yourself.

One of the places where we lived when I was growing up had this big wood out the back. And starting when I was about 8 I used to enjoy just walking alone through the wood late. Eleven p.m. Midnight. Later.

And if you don't believe the sun will rise stand alone and greet the coming night in the last remaining light.

When I get into bed at night I hope I don't get into it alone!

In Sleep we lie all naked and alone in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness and we are strange and beautiful asleep for we are dying the darkness and we know no death.

The most terrifying thing I can think of is being alone - and I mean utterly alone like no one else in the world alone - at night. That's the nucleus of the first story in my collection and it's also where the title came from for the book.

Getting through the nights is the toughest part. Being alone. Not having her there to talk to.

Marriage is good for those who are afraid to sleep alone at night.

Early on if I was alone two three nights in a row I'd start writing poems about suicide.

I was sleeping the other night alone thanks to the exterminator.

You are never so alone as when you are ill on stage. The most nightmarish feeling in the world is suddenly to feel like throwing up in front of four thousand people.

I used to think as I looked out on the Hollywood night 'There must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me dreaming of being a movie star.' But I'm not going to worry about them. I'm dreaming the hardest.

Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I'd sit all day and way into the night. Up in front there with the screen so big a little kid all alone and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn't miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either.

Only the lonely know the way I feel tonight.

There's a tremendous difference between alone and lonely. You could be lonely in a group of people. I like being alone. I like eating by myself. I go home at night and just watch a movie or hang out with my dog. I have to exert myself and really say oh God I've got to see my friends 'cause I'm too content being by myself.

I have to be alone very often. I'd be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That's how I refuel.

In the digital age of 'overnight' success stories such as Facebook the hard slog is easily overlooked.