In trying to be perfect, he perfected the art of anonymity.

Solitude: it's become my trade. As it requires a certain discipline, it's a condition I try to perfect. And yet it plagues me, it weighs on me in spite of my knowing it so well.

One must learn an inner solitude, wherever one may be.

Acquire the art of detachment, the virtue of method, and the quality of thoroughness, but above all the grace of humility.

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

Learn how to be alone without being lonely. Solitude is essential for creativity.

Learn silence. With the quiet serenity of a meditative mind, listen, absorb, transcribe, and transform.

I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you.

I would much rather sit, dimmed by inattention, and study the atmosphere and the silence and dance between people, but often times I’m not offered this privilege. The necessity for isolation, and the striving for attention is the only contradiction I find in being a writer and an actress.

I am working out the vocabulary of my silence.

Spend time in silence. Take time to get to know yourself and your genius in stillness.

Precisely because a human being has the ability to speak, for this very reason the ability to keep silent is an art; and precisely because this advantage of his tempts him so easily, the ability to keep silent is a great art.

As a precaution against boredom, my bitter enemy, it would have suited me to be a great, but unknown artist, using my talent only for the benefit of my solitude.

I discovered that to achieve perfect personal silence all I had to do was to attach myself leechlike to sound. I began to listen to everything. I probably hoped that after I had heard all the sounds, really heard them and packed them down, deep in my ears, the world would be quiet around me. I walked into rooms where people were laughing, their voices hitting the walls like stones, and I simply stood still-in the midst of the riot of sound. After a minute or two, silence would rush into the room from its hiding place because I had eaten up all of the sounds.