"What good is sitting all alone in your room?"
About this Quote
In context, you can’t really hear this without hearing Cabaret and its decadent imperative: life is collapsing outside, so the stage becomes both escape hatch and moral blind spot. That’s the subtext hiding beneath the pep. “Sitting all alone” isn’t just introversion; it’s withdrawal, the seductive belief that staying put keeps you safe. The line challenges that fantasy with a showbiz logic that doubles as survival strategy: community is messy, nightlife is risky, desire is complicated, but isolation is a dead end.
Minnelli’s delivery style matters as much as the words. She’s famous for turning vulnerability into electricity, selling the idea that you can walk into a room broken and still leave it illuminated. So the intent isn’t simply “go have fun.” It’s “stop letting your private despair feel like a personality.” In an era newly fluent in the language of solitude - depression, alienation, the curated quiet of modern life - the question still stings because it refuses to romanticize hiding.
Quote Details
| Topic | Loneliness |
|---|---|
| Source | Cabaret" (song) — music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb; lyric line sung by Liza Minnelli in the 1972 film Cabaret (song originally from the 1966 musical). |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Minnelli, Liza. (2026, January 15). What good is sitting all alone in your room? FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-good-is-sitting-all-alone-in-your-room-164177/
Chicago Style
Minnelli, Liza. "What good is sitting all alone in your room?" FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-good-is-sitting-all-alone-in-your-room-164177/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"What good is sitting all alone in your room?" FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-good-is-sitting-all-alone-in-your-room-164177/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2026.









