Words matter. These are the best Michael Finkel Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
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.
I think many people have this sense that something about modern society – the screens, the noise, the traffic, the constant busyness – has approached a point where living in the world feels somewhat unhealthy.
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.
There’s a difference between lying and not being straight.
I always fancied myself an outdoorsman, even though I’m a Jewish guy from the East Coast.
I spent 12 years traveling more than six months a year. I really needed to see the world.
I tend to be a fairly spirited person, but I’ve never hated anyone more than I hated Christian Longo after his trial, when I realized his guilt and that I had been partially duped.
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.
Perhaps one could say I’ve worked in South Africa too long, but I believe in forgiveness, especially when a person admits a mistake, asks for forgiveness, and works to right a wrong.
I am a writer. It’s like a third arm to me.
The so-called modern conveniences may, in fact, be extremely inconvenient – everything seems to exist as a distraction from any sort of deeper thought or contemplation.
I am guaranteeing you that if you see my byline on a story, it’s going to be the cleanest story you’ve ever read.
I committed pretty much the worst thing you can do, which is defraud the readers.
I never do formal interviews. I don’t use a tape recorder. I take notes but occasionally.
In an odd sort of way, the computer and the Internet is the hermit’s ideal form of communication. You don’t have to see anyone. To send an email, you don’t have to talk to anyone. You can just send it, and they’ll read it on their own. The Internet has been really good for hermits.
Modern life, especially with young children, so often seems like a mad rush… We so rarely take time to just do nothing – not look at our phones, not read the news.
I moved at age 22 to Montana to be able to walk in really wild woods, where the chances of being killed by a bear or mountain lion are not zero.
America might be the land of second chances, but it ain’t the land of third chances.
My advice for telling someone else’s story is to try not to consciously bend the story in any particular direction – to listen with an open mind, to include the good with the bad, to attempt to quell one’s biases and allow the person you’re writing about to emerge as wholly as possible, warts and all.
In my writing, I try to combine all my favorite elements of journalism – accuracy, real characters that exist on this planet – with all my favorite elements of literature: a sense of flow, of propulsion, of wanting to read every sentence.
