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

Book by Michael Finkel · 4 quotes · Solitude, Silence, Alone

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

“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.”

PeopleLifeMoneyLivingComputerWoodsPrimeAcceptableSaneIdeaPossibleDisturbedExchangeEnterprisingLivedRelaxingTentCubicleIndolentConfounded
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“The uncertainty wore on him. The conditions in jail--the handcuffs, the noise, the filth, the crowding--mangled his senses. It's likely that, if one must be incarcerated in the United States, a jail in central Maine would be among the more tolerable spots, but to Knight it was torture. "Bedlam" is how he referred to the place. It never got dark in jail; at eleven p.m., the lights merely became a little duller. "I suspect," he noted, "more damage has been done to my sanity in jail, in months; than years, decades, in the woods.”

YearsDarkUnited StatesConditionsMonthsWoodsDecadesNoiseUncertaintyTortureDamageJailSanityPlaceMaineFilthTolerableLightsHandcuffsWearIncarceratedDullerMangledCrowding
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“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.”

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