"When you work alone, you need to socialize at some level"
About this Quote
The specific intent is pragmatic. Working alone can distort your sense of reality: your feedback loops shrink, your assumptions go unchallenged, your mood becomes the barometer for everything. “Socialize” here isn’t small talk for its own sake; it’s calibration. Even minimal contact functions like a checksum against the errors that accumulate when you’re only ever in your own head. For a thriller writer in particular - someone paid to model how people lie, fear, desire, and betray - human contact is research, not leisure.
The subtext is a quiet warning about self-sufficiency as a pose. The lone-worker lifestyle is often sold as freedom, but it can slide into a kind of sensory deprivation. Deaver’s hedge, “at some level,” also acknowledges constraints: not everyone has the energy, time, or temperament for constant networking. He’s carving out a middle ground between hermitage and hustle culture.
Contextually, it lands in an era of remote work and creator economies where “independence” is both a brand and a risk. The line reads like a reminder that autonomy still requires community - not as a moral ideal, but as a survival skill.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Deaver, Jeffery. (2026, January 17). When you work alone, you need to socialize at some level. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-you-work-alone-you-need-to-socialize-at-some-56897/
Chicago Style
Deaver, Jeffery. "When you work alone, you need to socialize at some level." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-you-work-alone-you-need-to-socialize-at-some-56897/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"When you work alone, you need to socialize at some level." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-you-work-alone-you-need-to-socialize-at-some-56897/. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.





