"You don't have to be alone with your thoughts anymore. You don't have to process anything. You can call up someone to do something to instantly make you sort of feel better"
About this Quote
The genius of the quote is how it mimics the seduction it critiques. "You can call up someone" sounds benign, even neighborly, until the vague "someone" reveals an app-shaped world where help is anonymous and frictionless. The repetition of "you dont have to" reads like an infomercial for avoidance, a rhythm that mirrors the compulsive loop of scrolling, ordering, refreshing. Even the hedging - "sort of feel better" - gives away the hollowness. The improvement is immediate, but it is also provisional, a mood patch rather than a cure.
As an actor, Quaid is attuned to performance, and thats the subtext: weve built a society where emotional maintenance is increasingly handled through services, content, and other people doing emotional labor on demand. The context is the always-on attention economy: loneliness becomes a market, anxiety becomes a subscription, and the self becomes something you manage by never letting silence last long enough to say anything honest.
Quote Details
| Topic | Loneliness |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Quaid, Dennis. (2026, January 15). You don't have to be alone with your thoughts anymore. You don't have to process anything. You can call up someone to do something to instantly make you sort of feel better. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-dont-have-to-be-alone-with-your-thoughts-169351/
Chicago Style
Quaid, Dennis. "You don't have to be alone with your thoughts anymore. You don't have to process anything. You can call up someone to do something to instantly make you sort of feel better." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-dont-have-to-be-alone-with-your-thoughts-169351/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"You don't have to be alone with your thoughts anymore. You don't have to process anything. You can call up someone to do something to instantly make you sort of feel better." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-dont-have-to-be-alone-with-your-thoughts-169351/. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.






