"Solitude has become such a habit that it is disturbing to find I no longer notice anything or anyone except the things I wish to see."

"It was so disturbing today—this habit—that at the Tate I forced myself to take notice of the shape of the room I was standing in: because, like a dream or a fog, I existed and the paintings existed. Everything else melted like water. In a crowd I suddenly waken from an interior life and force myself to see and recognize the faces."

From "'Don’t Describe It, Remember It'/The author’s diaries from 1954" by Mavis Gallant (The New Yorker).