Nearly two centuries after the great painter Eugène Delacroix extolled the importance of solitude in creative work, legendary novelist Martin Amis makes the same point with piercing precision in his altogether fantastic Paris Review interview:

It has to be said, perhaps with some regret, that the first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone, most fully alive when alone. A tolerance for solitude isn’t anywhere near the full description of what really goes on. The most interesting things happen to you when you are alone.

Complement with Hemingway on working alone, some of humanity's greatest minds on the creative benefits of boredom, and this indispensable modern manifesto for how to be alone.