Michael Finkel, The Stranger In The Woods: The Extraordinary Story Of The Last True Hermit Quotes

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

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

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.

I read. That's my form of travel.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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