"I love being by myself"
About this Quote
In six plain words, Carrie Donovan gives solitude the kind of glamour fashion rarely allows it. Coming from an editor - a job built on taste, authority, and the quiet labor of deciding what gets seen - "I love being by myself" reads less like a confession than a posture: self-containment as power.
The intent feels pointed. Donovan isn't merely tolerating aloneness; she's claiming it as preference, even pleasure. That matters in a culture that treats women, especially public-facing women, as socially obligated to be available: charming at parties, legible in relationships, constantly "on". An editor's work is inherently backstage. Your fingerprints are everywhere, your name often isn't. Loving solitude becomes a way to protect the private self from an economy that feeds on access and conviviality.
The subtext is professional, too. Editorial judgment requires distance - from trends, from flattery, from the needy hum of consensus. Solitude is where standards form. It's also where a person can refuse the soft coercions of a scene: the networking, the performative intimacy, the sense that relevance is measured by invitations. By framing it as love, she flips the old suspicion that being alone signals failure. Here, aloneness is chosen, cultivated, and maybe even strategic.
Contextually, Donovan's era prized a very specific kind of female sociability: elegant, deferential, paired. This line quietly revolts against that script. It suggests the most radical luxury isn't a dress or a room, but the right to be unreachable - and happy about it.
The intent feels pointed. Donovan isn't merely tolerating aloneness; she's claiming it as preference, even pleasure. That matters in a culture that treats women, especially public-facing women, as socially obligated to be available: charming at parties, legible in relationships, constantly "on". An editor's work is inherently backstage. Your fingerprints are everywhere, your name often isn't. Loving solitude becomes a way to protect the private self from an economy that feeds on access and conviviality.
The subtext is professional, too. Editorial judgment requires distance - from trends, from flattery, from the needy hum of consensus. Solitude is where standards form. It's also where a person can refuse the soft coercions of a scene: the networking, the performative intimacy, the sense that relevance is measured by invitations. By framing it as love, she flips the old suspicion that being alone signals failure. Here, aloneness is chosen, cultivated, and maybe even strategic.
Contextually, Donovan's era prized a very specific kind of female sociability: elegant, deferential, paired. This line quietly revolts against that script. It suggests the most radical luxury isn't a dress or a room, but the right to be unreachable - and happy about it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Love |
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