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.

Knight's disdain for Thoreau was bottomless - 'he had no deep insight into nature'...

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

I'm not used to seeing people's faces. There's too much information there. Aren't you aware of it? Too much, too fast.

I read. That's my form of travel.

He left because the world is not made to accommodate people like him.

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.

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.

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

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

Music gives strength to the spirit.

Failure is information encased in a shell of pain.

We watched, and he taught us like he did every day we were with him. He showed us how to forgive.

If not you, who? If not now, when? The worst thing well-meaning people can do is simply let things remain as they are.

Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother.

The days of idealism had gone. Only life was left.

If you want to tell stories, be a writer, not a filmmaker.

I seemed to recall some words from an old Zen master, something like, "My Zen cuts down mountains." My rejection of Buddhism was a cutting down of mountains; that is precisely how it felt to me.

Incompetence, in my books, is the failure of the critical faculties to interfere constructively with the natural flow.

Great coaches are visionaries. Great coaches instill, nurture, and encourage vision, then model and motivate surrender to it.