“I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody too? Then there's a pair of us!”
Permalink: Emily Dickinson
About this quote
Dickinson's speaker insists on being nobody and then discovers that company is exactly what the poem denies, and the joke at the end is the first line's secret. The poem was unpublished in her lifetime and was not written to be read, which is part of why it feels so much like a private remark.
Source: I'm Nobody! Who are you? (Poem 260)