While reading Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain
Neither of my parents suffered from the little spooky prejudices that devour the people who know nothing but automobiles and movies and what's in the ice-box and what's in the papers and which neighbors are getting a divorce.
Which reminded me of this passage:
You can't understand. How could you? -- with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums -- how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude -- utter solitude without a policeman -- by the way of silence -- utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness.
--Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Norton Critical Editions)
reading a small book called Deserts edited and introduced by Wayne Grady based on journals of explorers, journalists, etc which perfectly demonstrates the truth of the above excerpts