90 Loner Quotes Those Who Love Their Own Company Can Relate To

By Danielle Dahl | Published September 24, 2022

These loner quotes will help you better understand the term and the people who prefer their own company.

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‘Loner’ is one of those words in the English language where connotation plays a large part in how an individual defines it.

For some people, a loner is the ‘outsider,’ or the ‘recluse’ that everyone stays away from because there is something just odd about them.

Other people romanticize the loner, seeing them as a ‘lone wolf,’ this almost mystical, powerful figure brimming with ideas forged in solitude.

Some think it is a necessary trait for genius, and others hear the word loner and feel fear.

These loner quotes capture a bit of all sentiment, even from those who say, “I am a loner.”

Some of these loner quotes are from geniuses like Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison.

Others are from creative wonders like Michael Douglas, Jules Verne, and Jodi Picoult.

There are a few loner quotes that are deeply profound and might make you tear up, while there are some that are kind of funny.

This contrast between opinions about being a loner begs the question, “Is it good to be a loner?”

Don’t forget to also check out these lonely quotes for when you feel like no one gets you.

Check out our most popular quote article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily inspiration.

Our inspirational quotes category page has all of our motivational quotes for all the different areas of life.

‘I am a loner’ quotes that explain what it feels like

1. “Yes, I guess you could say I am a loner, but I feel more lonely in a crowded room with boring people than I feel on my own.” ― Henry Rollins

2. “I like silence; I’m a gregarious loner and without the solitude, I lose my gregariousness.” ― Karen Armstrong

3. “Maybe ‘loner’ is too strong a word, but I’ve always enjoyed being on my own.” ― George Best

4. “I became a loner. I became a mountain man. A lot of those things are very good qualities and they help you do your work, help you be singular, and keep the artistic integrity of your work intact, but they don’t make it very easy to live your life.” ― John Milius

5. “I’m quite a loner. I realized that I’m very introverted, and I get energy by being alone instead of being with other people.” ― Candice Patton

6. “I do think of myself as a bit of a loner, a bit of an independent. I’m one of those people who, when they’re sick, like to curl up and remove myself. I don’t like a lot of people around. There is nothing you can do to help.” ― Michael Douglas

7. “Yeah, I like being on my own. I do. I tend to be a loner, so I’m okay. I’m not okay when I have to be around everyone all the time.” ― Keri Russell

8. “I do feel like a loner but I think it’s because I look at things differently than other people.” ― Ricky Williams

9. “Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.” ― Albert Einstein

10. “I am completely a loner. In my head I want to feel I can be anywhere. There is a sort of recklessness that being a loner allows me.” ― Arundhati Roy

You will also enjoy our article on being alone quotes.

Sad and powerful loner quotes that will make you teary-eyed

11. “Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.” ― Jodi Picoult

12. “Nobody enjoys the company of others as intensely as someone who usually avoids the company of others.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
13. “He craved silences and solitude. He simply could not get lost in another person’s life.” ― Sreesha Divakaran

14. “Sensitivity to the sound of one’s name is a special gift of loners. Because the loner does not often hear his name, he reacts dramatically in the rare event the word is uttered. Source: me.” ― Wataru Watari

15. “Those who understand the true nature of humanity are always loners.” — Dean Cavanagh

16. “Alone is what I have. Alone protects me.” — Sherlock

17. “The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.” — Anne Frank

18. “But there are no loners. No man lives in a void. His every act is conditioned by his time and his society.” ― William Manchester

19. “Language… has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.” — Paul Tillich

20. “Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don’t find themselves at all.” — Rollo May

Funny loner quotes that will have you rethinking what a loner is

21. “It might be true that no man is an island,” she said, “but you know those peninsulas that are just connected by a really thin neck of land—a sandbar, even? And sometimes, when the tide is high, they get cut off, almost completely. I wouldn’t say that there weren’t people like that.” ― A. L. Buehrer

22. “Sometimes all you have to do is tell people the truth. They won’t believe you. After that they leave you alone.” ― Benjamin Alire Sáenz

23. “You might be an introvert if you were ready to go home before you left the house.” ― Criss Jami

24. “If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

25. “Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.” — Honoré de Balzac

26. “Everybody likes to see the loner hitched. It tells them everything is right with the world.” — Philip O Ceallaigh

27. “They say isolation drives you crazy. Sure it does—when you can’t get enough of it.” — Anneli Rufus

28. “Reading requires a loner’s temperament, a high tolerance for silence, and an unhealthy preference for the company of people who are imaginary or dead.” — David Samuels

29. “We entrepreneurs are loners, vagabonds, troublemakers. Success is simply a matter of finding and surrounding ourselves with those open-minded and clever souls who can take our insanity and put it to good use.” — Anita Roddick

Short being a loner quotes about solitude and being lonely

30. “I hate when I can’t control my loneliness.” ― Leju Thomas

31. “Being a loner doesn’t make you lonely, but being lonely can make a loner.” ― Eiro Silvigne

32. “Solitude is a sad thing, with no heart to which to confide your griefs.” ― Jules Verne

33. “If love and friendship makes you unhappy, try solitude.” ― Michael Bassey Johnson

34. “You get so alone at times that it just makes sense.” ― Charles Bukowski

35. “I love my loneliness as it helps me gather strength to deal with people.” ― Amit Abraham

36. “The best things have always come from the loneliest people.” — Adam Gnade

37. “Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.” ― Aristotle

38. “Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.” — Laurence Sterne

39. “The best thinking has been done in solitude.” — Thomas A. Edison

40. “You only grow when you are alone.” — Paul Newman

41. “Seclusion is the price of greatness.” — Paramahansa Yogananda

Best loner quotes about the upside of being a loner

42. “I do not mind someone talking to me, as long as they do not mind me not listening or talking to them.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

43. “The best adventures are embarked on alone.” ― Lidia Longorio

44. “I finally went where everyone goes and I realized I was never missing out.” ― Meraaqi

45. “I think it’s good for a person to spend time alone. It gives them an opportunity to discover who they are and to figure out why they are always alone.” — Amy Sedaris

46. “One of the many advantages of being a loner is that often there’s time to think, ponder, brood, meditate deeply, and figure things out to one’s satisfaction.” — Andrea Seigel

47. “Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.” ― Albert Einstein

48. “Loners, if you catch them, are well worth the trouble. Not dulled by excess human contact, nor blasé or focused on your crotch while jabbering about themselves. Loners are curious, vigilant, full of surprises. They do not cling. Separate wherever they go, awake or asleep, they shimmer with the iridescence of hidden things seldom seen.” ― Anneli Rufus

49. “The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. Originality thrives in seclusion, free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone—that is the secret of invention: be alone, that is when ideas are born.” — Nikola Tesla

50. “The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.” ― Aldous Huxley

Loner quotes that will soothe You

51. “I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else. I will never feel the pressure of peers or the burden of parental expectation.” — David Levithan

52. “Protagonists are always loners, almost by definition.” — Pauline Kael

53. “It is impossible to ostracize a lone wolf.” — Joseph Annaruma

54. Isolation is a way to know ourselves.” — Franz Kafka

55. “Being a loner is not about hate but need: We need what others dread, we dread what others need.” — Anneli Rufus

56. “I owe everything that I have done to the fact that I am very much at ease being alone.” — Marilynne Robinson

57. “I’ve always been kind of a loner. Continue to be.” — Benjamin McKenzie

58. “I’m pretty much a loner and I’ve lived under the radar.” — Selma Blair

59. “In solitude, the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.” — Laurence Sterne

60. Solitude is independence.” — Hermann Hesse

Loner Quotes for those who love their own company

61. “You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.” ― Wayne W. Dyer

62. “The loner who looks fabulous is one of the most vulnerable loners of all.” ― Anneli Rufus

63. “To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.” ― Anthony Burgess

64. “Sometimes it is necessary to be lonely in order to prove that you are right.” — Vladimir Putin

65. “I’m very much a loner. I don’t like long relationships with people and I always keep people at a distance.” ― Anthony Hopkins

66. “A lot of times the characters I play tend to be kind of loners or they don’t have best friends or best buddies.” ― Michael Shannon

67. “A man can be himself alone so long as he is alone … if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

68. “I accepted the fact that as much as I want to lead others, and love to be around other people, in some essential way, I am something of a loner.” — Arthur Ashe

69. “Just because someone is a loner, it doesn’t mean they’re alone. And just because someone is alone, it doesn’t mean they’re lonely.” — Jason Daniel Chaplin

70. “Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely.” — Erma Bombeck

Loner Quotes From Loners To Find Their Passion

71. “If you’re a loner and you like to go off and run on your own, do that.” ― Natalie Dormer

72. “I’m a loner clear down deep to my guts.” ― Kirk Douglas

73. “Lately he’d been seen going out less and less, becoming that strangest of animals in a small town: a loner.” ― Kristin Hannah

74. “I was quite the quiet teenager. I was a bit of a loner, a little bit of an outsider.” ― Mika

75. “I grew up in Tennessee where you either play football or you don’t do anything at all. So I was a bit of loner, being interested in music.” ― Justin Timberlake

76. “I’ve always been a loner, and I’ve spent most of my life as a single person.” ― Juliana Hatfield

77. “Until I truly loved, I was alone.” ― Caroline Norton

78. “From the time I was a little kid, I was always shy. Performing was when I was outgoing. So I guess I am a loner. I get claustrophobia if a lot of people are around.” ― Johnny Carson

79. “I try to be accommodating, but I’m pretty much a loner.” ― Paul Beatty

80. “Even when I was coming through school I was a loner and I used to study music and listen to it and play it and play it, and I was in bands.” ― Billy West

Loner Quotes To Help You Learn To Be Social

81. “I’m a little bit of a weirdo – I’m kind of a loner, I didn’t go to college, I spend a lot of my time reading. I’ve been working since I was 17, so that’s sort of been my life.” — Zosia Mamet

82. “Because I can isolate and be a bit of a loner, [my ideal] is finding some sense of community where I’m one of many and where my skills are equally as important and valuable.” — Lissie

83. “I am a loner by nature, and then I’m a writer, which makes me twice a loner.” — Gustavo Perez Firmat

84. “Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.” — James Russell Lowell

85. “School was a very cruel environment and I was a loner. But I learnt to get hurt and I learnt to cope with it.” — Kate Bush

86. “Animal lovers often tend to be misanthropes or loners, and so they transfer their affection to the creature in their control.” — Paul Theroux

87. “I was a real loner in high school, even though people assume I was the head cheerleader.” — Kate Bosworth

88. “I was this weird loner kid who got drunk by himself all the time.” — Gerard Way

89. A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

90. “There was a point when I was 15 or 16 that I realized that my father wanted me to be a loner. I decided, ‘It’s okay to be an introvert, but I don’t want to be a loner. I want a few other people in my life.” — Mark Vonnegut

What did you learn from these loner quotes?

Introverts and Extroverts have become like identity markers, the product of various personality tests, we carry around with us like a badge… “I’m an ENFJ,” or, according to The Big Five personality test, “I score high in extroversion.”

Maybe you are the rarest Meyers Briggs personality type there is, the elusive INFJ.

Is one better than the other?

Are introverts destined to become ‘loners.’

An extrovert might not understand the need an introvert has for solitude, but it doesn’t make it a bad thing.

In fact, despite humans being a social species, recent research has shown that being a loner might be good for your mental health.

According to writer Christine Ro, Gregory Feist, whose work centers on the psychology of creativity at California’s San Jose State University, has defined two key elements that help the creative thinking process: originality and usefulness.

His study showed several personality traits commonly associated with creativity: openness (receptiveness to new thoughts and experiences), self-efficacy (confidence), and autonomy (independence)—which includes “a lack of concern for social norms” and “a preference for being alone.”

He studied artists and scientists and discovered that one of the most prominent traits among creators is their disinterest in socializing.

If you found this article interesting, you should also check out these Quiet quotes from the book by Susan Cain.