People seek retreats for themselves, in the country, by the sea, or in the mountains... But the best retreat is into your own mind.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
THE SOLITUDE OF OUTER SPACE
Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
Think: perhaps I’m not interesting, but I am the only thing I have to offer, and I want to offer something. And by offering myself in a true way I am doing a great service to the world, because it is rare and it will help.
I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. I’ve had this tendency ever since I was young, when, given a choice, I much preferred reading books on my own or concentrating on listening to music over being with someone else. I could always think of things to do by myself.
I am working like a madman, too hard… Because I want to get rid of all this trouble and to establish an artist’s studio.
CARL JUNG
BUILDING A TOWER FOR SOLITUDE
I had to make a confession of faith in stone. That was the beginning of the tower, the house I built for myself at Bollingen.
I was 31. I had saved up $2700 and moved from New York City to a little town in northern California. I rented a house behind another house for $105 a month. I had my old Chevy van, my Smith-Corona typewriter, and my cat, Mo. (…) I didn’t talk to anybody during my year of turning pro, I didn’t hang out. I just worked. I had a book in mind and I had decided I would finish it or kill myself. I could not run away again, or let people down again, or let myself down again. This was it, do or die.
If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.
49CHERYL STRAYED A THOUSAND MILES OF SOLITUDE TO FIND YOURSELF
It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental.
You ask if I have ever found ‘reading and writing curiously self-sufficient.’
Well, both Lota and I read from 7 am intermittently until 1 am every day, and all sorts of things, good and bad… And then I’ve always had a daydream of being a lighthouse keeper, absolutely alone, with no one to interrupt my reading or just sitting.
COLOPHON
LITTLE BOOK OF SOLITUDE A book by JOOST JOOSSEN
Illustrations and graphic design
BART KIGGEN
Editing
SANDY LOGAN AND LOUISE VANDERPUTTE
D/2025/12.005/1
ISBN 9789460583711
NUR 734
© 2025, Luster Publishing, Antwerp lusterpublishing.com
info@lusterpublishing.com
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