1. Fredette, Paul A & Fredette, Karen K 2011, Consider the Ravens: On Contemporary Hermit Life. “I think of myself as an ‘engaged hermit’, someone involved with ordinary worldly issues and pursuits but finding little personal identity there.”
  2. Raven’s Bread Ministries, online: ravensbreadministries.com. “The resurgence of eremitical life in the western world begun in the 1950s shows no sign of abating. It is embraced as a means of finding personal balance and also as a way of caring spiritually for our swiftly evolving planet.”
  3. Porter, Bill 2009, Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits. “Talking about her life and practice, she [the hermit nun Ch’uan-fu] came close to tears. She was lonely. And her roof leaked. She said, ‘You can’t live in the mountains if you’re still attached, if you haven’t seen through the red dust. Life in the mountains is hard. But once you’ve seen through the illusions of this world, hardships aren’t important. The only thing that matters is practice. If you don’t practice, you’ll never get free of the dust of delusion.’”
  4. Merton, Thomas 1956, Thoughts in Solitude. “If we were really humble, we would know to what extent we are liars!”
  5. Arndt, Karin L 2013, A room of one’s own, revisited: An existential-hermeneutic study of female solitude, PhD thesis, Duquesne University. “Each of these women made a choice to be alone and to make the break of separation and in so doing each, in some way, said ‘no’ to others and to cultural expectations of what it means to be a woman.”