Michael Finkel Quotes

#1. Carl Jung said that only an introvert could see "the unfathomable stupidity of man

Michael Finkel

#2. the true solitary does not seek himself, but loses himself.

Michael Finkel

#3. I think that most of us feel like something is missing from our lives. And I wondered then if Knight's journey was to seek it. But life isn't about searching endlessly to find what's missing. It's about learning to live with the missing parts.

Michael Finkel

#4. There was no one to complain to in the woods, so I did not complain,' Knight said.

Michael Finkel

#5. 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 are we able to cope with it, and the more terrifying it gets.

Michael Finkel

#6. The more you realize, the more you realize there is nothing to realize," she said. "The idea that there's somewhere we have got to get to, and something we have to attain, is our basic delusion.

Michael Finkel

#7. That silence intimidates puzzles me. Silence is to me normal, comfortable." Later he added, "I will admit to feeling a little contempt for those who can't keep quiet.

Michael Finkel

#8. I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all, there is more life in me than in you.

Michael Finkel

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. The life inside a book always felt welcoming to Knight. It pressed no demands on him, while the world of human interactions was so complex.

Michael Finkel

#12. And what about a text message? Isn't that just using a telephone as a telegraph?

Michael Finkel

#13. Knight's disdain for Thoreau was bottomless - 'he had no deep insight into nature'...

Michael Finkel

#14. 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

#15. He left because the world is not made to accommodate people like him.

Michael Finkel

#16. The only book Knight didn't steal was the one he most often saw. 'I had no need for a Bible,' he said.

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#17. His facial hair served not just as a calendar but also as a mask, absorbing the stares of others while allowing him a little privacy in plain sight. "I can hide behind it, I can play to stereotypes and assumptions. One of the benefits of being labeled a hermit is that it permits me strange behavior.

Michael Finkel

#18. 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 occasionally fumbles an encounter, a victim of social clumsiness. It's part of being human.

Michael Finkel

#19. 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 and disturbing.

Michael Finkel

#20. He never bothered listening to sports; the bored him, every one of them.

Michael Finkel

#21. He'd drop his clothes and slip into the water. The lake's top few inches, after cooking all day in the sun, would be nearly bath warm. "I'd stretch out in the water, " he said, "and lie flat on my back, and look at the stars.

Michael Finkel

#22. The word "noise" is derived from the Latin word nausea.

Michael Finkel

#23. He mentioned that he didn't like Jack Kerouac either, but this wasn't quite true. "I don't like people who like Jack Kerouac," he clarified.

Michael Finkel

#24. I read. That's my form of travel.

Michael Finkel

#25. 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 necessary ones remained.

Michael Finkel

#26. The American essayist William Deresiewicz wrote that "no real excellence, personal or social, artistic, philosophical, scientific, or moral, can arise without solitude.

Michael Finkel