Quotes from Michael Finkel

America might be the land of second chances, but it ain't the land of third chances.

I always fancied myself an outdoorsman, even though I'm a Jewish guy from the East Coast.

I'd lied many times: to bolster my credentials, to elicit sympathy, to make myself appear less ordinary.

I never do formal interviews. I don't use a tape recorder. I take notes but occasionally.

I firmly believe that if we all just took a little time - like 10 or 15 minutes a day - to do nothing but sit calmly with our thoughts, this world would be a much better place.

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.

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'm always theoretically opposed to capital punishment as a matter of policy; like, I don't believe a state should put its citizens to death.

Not to get too maudlin, but I think all mistakes are tests for one's mettle.

You can read my stuff; there are not very many quotes. It's more impressionistic.

My fight-or-flight mechanism... had served me well in Gaza, in Afghanistan, and all the places I'd been.

I spent most of my youth in Montana, where there are long, cold winters, but Maine has the coldest winters you could imagine. Not only are they long, not only does it snow, but it gets really damp. It's a wet cold with a lot of wind.

Frightening things happen in solitude.

Extraordinary things happen in solitude.

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.

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.

I committed pretty much the worst thing you can do, which is defraud the readers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.