Jean

“There was no audience, no one to perform for. There was no need to define myself. I became irrelevant.”
― Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

“Everything moves at light speed, without rest. “It’s too loud. Too colorful. The lack of aesthetics. The crudeness. The inanities. The trivia. The inappropriate choices of aspirations and goals.”
― Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

“If birth was being thrown energetically up into the air, we aged as we rose. At the height of our ascent we were middle-aged and then we fell for the rest of our lives, the whole second half. Falling might take just as long, but it was nothing like rising. The whole time you were rising you could not imagine what came next in your particular, unique journey; you could not see around the corner. Whereas falling ended the same way for everyone.”
― Miranda July, All Fours

“Jefferies wrote, in his autobiography The Story of My Heart, that the type of life celebrated by society, one of hard work and unceasing chores and constant routine, does nothing but “build a wall about the mind.”
― Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit