The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men necessarily must avoid the state of being alone.

You have to have enough respect for other human beings to leave their lives alone. If you admire that life build it for yourself. Don't just try to come in and take somebody else's life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?