Michael Finkel > Quotes

“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, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

“Carl Jung said that only an introvert could see "the unfathomable stupidity of man”
― 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

“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, 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

“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. Knight”
― 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

“One's desire to be alone, biologists have found, is partially genetic and to some degree measurable. If you have low levels of the pituitary peptide oxytocin--sometimes called the master chemical of sociability-- and high quantities of the hormone vasopressin, which may suppress your need for affection, you tend to require fewer interpersonal relationships.”
― 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

“The world is a confusing place, meaningful and meaningless at once.”
― 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

“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

“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. Some philosophers believe that loneliness is the only true feeling there is. We live orphaned on a tiny rock in the immense vastness of space, with no hint of even the simplest form of life anywhere around us for billions upon billions of miles, alone beyond all imagining. We live locked in our own heads and can never entirely know the experience of another person. Even if we're surrounded by family and friends, we journey into death completely alone.”
― Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

“Art is the result of facing almost no survival pressure at all. It’s the product of leisure time. Our big brains, the most complex instruments known in the universe, have been released from the vigilance of evading predators and seeking sustenance, permitting our imagination to gambol and explore, to dream while awake, to share visions of God. Art signals our freedom. It exists because we’ve won the evolutionary war.”
― Michael Finkel, The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession

“Language and hearing are seated in the cerebral cortex, the folded gray matter that covers the first couple of millimeters of the outer brain like wrapping paper. When one experiences silence, absent even reading, the cerebral cortex typically rests. Meanwhile, deeper and more ancient brain structures seem to be activated--the subcortical zones. People who live busy, noisy lives are rarely granted access to these areas. 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

“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

“It isn’t action, he suspects, that usually lands a thief in prison. It’s hesitation.”
― Michael Finkel, The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession

“Solitude increased my perception. But here's the tricky thing: when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. There was no audience, no one to perform for. There was no need to define myself. I became irrelevant. (I)solation felt more like communion...To put it romantically, I was completely free.”
― Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

“The word "noise" is derived from the Latin word nausea.”
― Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

“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, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

“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, 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

“Two of life’s greatest pleasures, by my reckoning, are camping and reading—most gloriously, both at once.”
― Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

“If you like solitude, you're never alone.”
― Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods

“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

“Beauty, to be unpoetic but precise, is in the medial orbital frontal cortex of the beholder.”
― Michael Finkel, The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession

“is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
― Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

“In the eyes of the law, how a thief steals is more significant than what’s taken: robbing a candy bar with a gun is worse than carrying off a Cranach painting unarmed.”
― Michael Finkel, The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession

“Socrates may have concluded that his most valuable possession was his leisure. “Beware the barrenness of a busy life” is a quote commonly attributed to him.”
― 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