105 Quotes by Michael Finkel

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I read. That’s my form of travel."

"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."

"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."

"I think that it's human nature to categorize and label things. That's generally the way that the medical and psychological professions work. You look at elements of what you have, and you are able to categorize it, and then you can cure it. That's generally what works."

"Extraordinary things happen in solitude."

"There have always been hermits: people who want to get away from other humans. Literally, some of the first extant books and poems found in Mesopotamia and China mention people living alone in the woods. It's this primal fascination that exists across all cultures and all times."

"As a writer, I spend a lot of time alone, and I like it. I'm also a long-distance runner, and I love long, solo road trips; I can drive literally all night, drinking coffee, and not even listening to the radio, just strangely content sifting through the random thoughts in my own head."