“ The American essayist William Deresiewicz wrote that "no real excellence, personal or social, artistic, philosophical, scientific, or moral, can arise without solitude. Michael Finkel
“ Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, wrote that nothing can be expressed about solitude "that has not already been said better by the wind in the pine trees. Michael Finkel
“ Still, the ten days were enough for me to see, as if peering over the edge of a well, that silence could be mystical, and that if you dared, diving fully into your inner depths might be both profound… Michael Finkel
“ Conversations between people can move like tennis games, swift and unpredictable. There are constant subtle visual and verbal cues, there's innuendo, sarcasm, body language, tone. Everyone occasionall… Michael Finkel
“ Silence, it appears, is not the opposite of sound. It is another world altogether, literally offering a deeper level of thought, a journey to the bedrock of the self. Michael Finkel
“ Modern life seems set up so that we can avoid loneliness at all costs, but maybe it's worthwhile to face it occasionally. The further we push aloneness away, the less we are able to cope with it, and… Michael Finkel
“ Knight seemed to weigh the precision of every word he used, careful as a poet. Even his handwritten letters had gone through at least one draft, he said, mostly to remove unnecessary insults. Only nec… Michael Finkel
“ Passion must be subject to reason; emotions lead one astray. "There was no one to complain to in the woods, so I did not complain. Michael Finkel
“ I'm not used to seeing people's faces. There's too much information there. Aren't you aware of it? Too much, too fast. Michael Finkel
“ It's possible that Knight believed he was one of the few sane people left. He was confounded by the idea that passing the prime of your life in a cubicle, spending hours a day at a computer, in exchan… Michael Finkel
“ His chief form of entertainment was reading. The last moments he was in a cabin were usually spent scanning bookshelves and nightstands. The life inside a book always felt welcoming to Knight. It pres… Michael Finkel
“ The only book Knight didn't steal was the one he most often saw. 'I had no need for a Bible,' he said. Michael Finkel
“ Knight's disdain for Thoreau was bottomless - 'he had no deep insight into nature'... Michael Finkel
“ He pilfered a copy of Ulysses, but it was possibly the one book he did not finish. 'What's the point of it? I suspect it was a bit of a joke by Joyce. He just kept his mouth shut as people read into i… Michael Finkel
“ In 1988, a cave explorer named Véronique Le Guen volunteered for an extreme experiment: to live alone in an underground cavern in southern France without a clock for one hundred and eleven days, monit… Michael Finkel
