It is a very strange sensation to inexperience youth to feel itself quite alone the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quitted. The charm of adventure sweetens that sensation, the glow of pride warms it; but then the throb of fear disturbs it; and fear with me became predominant when half an hour elapsed, and still I was alone.

No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else

Why is it that no one understands me and everybody likes me

No one properly gets, or can fully sympathize with, anyone else.

No adolescent ever wants to be understood, which is why they complain about being misunderstood all the time.

Talk about not knowing other people — why, when you came right down to it, you didn't even know yourself!

Other people can help you, but if you're not trying to understand yourself, nobody else can do it for you.

Unless you really understand others, you can hardly attain your own self-understanding.

It is difficult to know yourself if you do not know others.

As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know. Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.

I had friends but I was spending a great deal of my time alone and for me that was vital because there's an awful lot you learn about yourself when you're alone.

So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying,
An intolerable waiting,
A longing for another place and time,
Another condition.

If you are an adolescent, here is the trick to being neither quite a nerd nor quite a jock: be no one.
It is easier than you think.

In the end there doesn’t have to be anyone who understands you. There just has to be someone who wants to.