A Quote by Theodore Roethke

When I go mad, 
 I call my friends by phone: 
 I am afraid they might think 
 they're alone. — © Theodore Roethke
When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.
I'm afraid to be alone, I'm afraid not to be alone. I'm afraid of what I am, what I'm not, what I might become, what I might never become. I don't want to stay at my job for the rest of my life, but I'm afraid to leave. And I'm just tired, you know? I'm just so tired of being afraid.
I'm not afraid to live. I'm not afraid to fail. I'm not afraid to succeed. I'm not afraid to fall in love. I'm not afraid to be alone. I'm just afraid I might have to stop talking about myself for five minutes.
I jog, actually; I go at night. A lot of women, they don't like to go jogging alone at night. They're afraid they might get accosted. I go naked. That way, if there are any perverts around, they think I'm already being chased.
And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive
When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa; I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.
As a kid growing up, I really hated being alone. I was always that kid that was like, 'Do you want to hang out? Let's go to the mall. Let's go to the movies. Let's go to the park.' I would call people and call people and call people. If I was alone when I wasn't at school, then there was something wrong.
Tomorrow you might get a phone call about something wonderful and you might get a phone call about something terrible.
When I do a mix tape for my kids, for my friends, for my lover, I meticulously choose the tracks, and it's beautiful. And when they are alone they think of me - and when I am alone I think of them.
For a long time, I was afraid to be alone. I had to learn how to be alone. And there are still times when I think, Uh-oh! I gotta talk to somebody here or I'm gonna go crazy! But I like to be alone. Now I do. I really do. There's a big luxury in solitude.
An elaborate system of etiquette and social standards flowered around the home phone: how long a child might be allowed to stay on the phone, how late one could call without being impolite, and of course, the dread implications of a late night call which violated that norm.
A lot of people think it's insane to swim out in blue water with a great white shark, but my experience tells me I can do it safely. Other people might consider it mad, granted, but then I might think what they do is mad.
I am not afraid if people think Matt LeBlanc in 'Episodes' is who I am - my friends and family know who I am.
And this was the main precondition, that anything might be something else. Once I'd accepted that, it followed that I might be mad, or that someone might think me mad. How could I say for certain that I wasn't, if I couldn't say for certain that a curtain wasn't a mountain range?
We all use texting as a crutch because it's so easy and it doesn't really stop our day for the most part but I think to assure a woman you want to go out, to see that you're serious, you take the extra effort to pick up the phone and make a phone call.
I am out in public and using the phone. I am in a phone booth, got the phone in my hand and a man taps on the glass and says You using the phone? Nope, I'm superman, i am just looking for my costume. Here's your sign!
No, what worries me is that I might in a sense adapt to this environment and come to be comfortable here and not resent it anymore. And I am afraid that as the years go by that I may forget, I may begin to lose my memories of the mountains and the woods and that's what really worries me, that I might lose those memories, and lose that sense of contact with wild nature in general. But I am not afraid they are going to break my spirit.
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