And I find - I'm 63 and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn't diminished any. That's the necessary part of being a writer you better like being alone.

The principal contributor to loneliness in this country is television. What happens is that the family 'gets together' alone.

If I was writing songs just for me I'd only play them in my living room alone.

Comics for me is being able to sing alone in the shower. I find it freeing. You just pick up a pen and get to it.

I have no time for those who say there is no way Scotland could go it alone. I know first-hand the contribution Scotland and Scots make to Britain's success - so for me there's no question about whether Scotland could be an independent nation.

I'm very shy really. I spend a lot of time in my room alone reading or writing or watching television.

Can anyone understand how it is to have lived in the White House and then suddenly to be living alone as the President's widow?

You could say in a vulgar Freudian way that I am the unhappy child who escapes into books. Even as a child I was most happy being alone. This has not changed.

Happiness is spiritual born of truth and love. It is unselfish therefore it cannot exist alone but requires all mankind to share it.

Our world is so glutted with useless information images useless images sounds all this sort of thing. It's a cacophony it's like a madness I think that's been happening in the past twenty-five years. And I think anything that can help a person sit in a room alone and not worry about it is good.

I don't like being in houses alone.

I have a huge active imagination and I think I'm really scared of being alone because if I'm left to my own devices I'll just turn into a madwoman.

Alone I'm nothing.

On stage I make love to 25 000 different people then I go home alone.

I live alone with cats books pictures fresh vegetables to cook the garden the hens to feed.

I have an internal protectiveness where it's like if it comes to just me as frightened as I am of losing someone I love or things going sour or simply being alone there is a dark place in my brain where I'm like It could happen and I'm okay I'm prepared.

Even if I have to stand alone I will not be afraid to stand alone. I'm going to fight for you. I'm going to fight for what's right. I'm going to fight to hold people accountable.

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved the inquisition might have let him alone.

I need absolutely to be alone.

There's a lot of people out there who go through hard times and they feel alone. They feel like nobody is there. But I'm in the same boat.

I never did anything alone. Whatever was accomplished in this country was accomplished collectively.

Love alone could waken love.

No one ever said on their deathbed 'Gee I wish I had spent more time alone with my computer'.

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.