Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
27 quotes
"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 it more then there was. Pseudo-intellectuals love to drop the name Ulysses as their favorite book. I refused to be intellectually bullied into finishing it."
Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"Knight's disdain for Thoreau was bottomless - 'he had no deep insight into nature'..."
Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"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, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"With his release imminent, Knight seems more unsettled than ever. He scratches furiously at his knees. Jail, he's realized, might not be all bad. There's routine and order in jail, and he's able to click into a survival mode that is not too dissimilar, in terms of steeliness of mental state, to the one he'd perfected during winters in the woods. "I'm surrounded in here by less than desirable people," he says, "but at least I wasn't thrown into the waters of society and expected to swim."
Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"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 exchange for money, was considered acceptable, but relaxing in a tent in the woods was disturbed. Observing the trees was indolent; cutting them down was enterprising. What did Knight do for a living? He lived for a living."
Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"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, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"I read. That's my form of travel."
Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"He left because the world is not made to accommodate people like him."
Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"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, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"Soon he essentially stopped talking. "I am retreating into silence as a defensive mode," he mentioned. Eventually, he was down to uttering just five words, and only to guards: yes; no; please; thank you. "I am surprised," he wrote, "by the amount of respect this garners me. 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, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"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, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"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 the more terrifying it gets. Some philosophers believe that loneliness is the only true feeling there is."
Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"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, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"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, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"Not for a moment did he consider keeping a journal. He would never allow anyone to read his private thoughts; therefore, he did not risk writing them down. "I'd rather take it to my grave," he said. And anyway, when was a journal ever honest? "It either tells a lot of truths to cover a single lie, " he said, "or a lot of lies to cover a single truth."
Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"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, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"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, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"He never bothered listening to sports; the bored him, every one of them."
Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"I understand I've made an unusual lifestyle choice. But the label 'crazy' bothers me. Annoys me. Because it prevents response. When someone asks if you're crazy, Knight lamented, you can either say yes, which makes you crazy, or you can say no, which makes you sound defensive, as if you fear that you really are crazy. There's no good answer."
Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"There was no one to complain to in the woods, so I did not complain,' Knight said."
Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"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, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"The American essayist William Deresiewicz wrote that "no real excellence, personal or social, artistic, philosophical, scientific, or moral, can arise without solitude."
Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"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, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"People earnestly say to me here, 'Mr Knight, we have cellphones now, and you're going to really enjoy them.' That's their enticement for me to rejoin society. 'You're going to love it,' they say. I have no desire. And what about a text message? Isn't that just using a telephone as a telegraph? We're going backwards."
Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
"Maybe, I thought, Knight would talk about the marrow. He sat quietly, whether thinking or fuming or both, it was hard to tell. But he eventually arrived at a reply. It felt like some great mystic was about to revel the meaning of life."Get enough sleep," he said.He set his jaw in a way that conveyed he wouldn't be saying any more. This was what he had learned. I accepted it as truth."
Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit