Party of One: The Loner’s Manifesto by Anneli Rufus

Painters and sculptors now and then hire models. Writers, on the other hand, have no use even for hired company while writing. Even the hint of human beings distracts—a doorbell, a phone, shouting in the street. Appointments scribbled in a daybook. And distraction kills. It slices the heads off of fictional characters just as they open their mouths and begin to speak. It lops their limbs off as they try to walk. It pours acid on poems in utero.  —Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner’s Manifesto (p.124)