“Exploration of my (apparently vital) need of solitude: and yet I have a (no less vital) need of my friends.
I must therefore: 1) force myself to ‘call’ them from time to time, find the energy to do so, combat my—telephonic (among other kinds)—apathy; 2) ask them to understand that above all they must let me call them. If they less often, less systematically, got in touch with me, that would mean for me that I must get in touch with them.”
Roland Barthes
more infosource: entry dated August 3, 1978, in Mourning Diary, translated by Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010), 181.
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category: friend, introvert, mourning, socializing, solitude
medium: diary
notes: On index cards, Roland Barthes starting keeping a mourning diary the day after his mother died in October 1977.
“You ask of my companions. Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog large as myself, that my father bought me. They are better than beings because they know, but do not tell.”
Emily Dickinson
more infosource: The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (New York: Biblo & Tannen Publishers, 1971), 239.
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category: companionship, dog, friend, nature, sunset
medium: letter
notes: April 1862 letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson
friend