Passion must be subject to reason; emotions lead one astray. "There was no one to complain to in the woods, so I did not complain.

— Michael Finkel

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.

— Michael Finkel

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

Soon he essentially stopped talking. "I am retreating into silence as a defensive mode," he mentioned. Eventually, he was down to uttering just five words, and only to guards: yes; no; please; thank you. "I am surprised," he wrote, "by the amount of respect this garners me. 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

Still, the ten days were enough for me to see, as if peering over the edge of a well, that silence could be mystical, and that if you dared, diving fully into your inner depths might be both profound and disturbing.

— Michael Finkel

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

— Michael Finkel

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

— Michael Finkel

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

— Michael Finkel

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.

— Michael Finkel