Creativity Quote by Emily Carr

Carr’s line turns a familiar existential chestnut into an accusation against the living. Yes, we arrive and depart solo, but she’s less interested in deathbed metaphysics than in the everyday condition of being mis-seen, unheard, out of step. The sting is in the reversal: the supposedly communal middle - careers, cities, families, salons - can be the loneliest stretch of all. “Even going and coming” makes birth and death sound almost procedural, as if the bookends are clean and comprehensible compared to the muddled, crowded middle where you’re expected to belong.

As an artist, Carr wasn’t just theorizing solitude; she was documenting it. Working on the margins of Canada’s art establishment, often dismissed for her intensity and independence, she knew the social world’s talent for turning difference into isolation. The subtext is about perception: being alive among people doesn’t guarantee contact. It can mean constant translation, performance, compromise - and the exhaustion of realizing those efforts still don’t bridge the gap.

There’s also a modern edge here. Carr anticipates the way public life can amplify privateness: you can be surrounded by noise and still feel unaccompanied. The quote’s power comes from its calm, almost plainspoken cadence, which refuses melodrama while delivering something harsher: solitude isn’t a dramatic exception. It’s the ambient weather of consciousness, thickest not at the threshold moments, but in the long, daily stretch where everyone assumes you’re fine.