“Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn't have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn't have to be a walk during which you'll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don't find meaning but "steal" some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn't make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.”
—Albert Camus, from Notebooks, 1951-1959
I’m content with solitude and a few good people, and I don’t crave to be surrounded by large crowds. I don’t go out of my way to befriend acquaintances, and I enjoy spending time with myself. I don’t need someone to talk to when I’m sitting alone, and I will not let you understand me or get to know me if I don’t feel you will correlate into my life somehow. Draw your own opinions, of which you’ll deem fact anyway; Make friends endlessly and enjoy attention from friends and people who want to be interested in you romantically—that’s all you. I’ll stick to my introverted ways, with the exclusion of the occasional extroverted spontaneity. Leave me be.
