Kazuko was worried about him, calling him a hikikomori, a self-imposed shut-in.

. . . I am in my hermitage perhaps 70 to 80 percent of the time. I relish and enjoy time with others. I have been called "the sociable hermit." Ironically, lengthy solitude often invokes a verbal avalanche when I find myself with a dear and treasured friend, or at a rare social occasion. . . . Solitaries, I suppose, are not always introverts.

The hermit, without access to the news of the day, owes it to himself to be up to date on the doings of ancient Rome.

Ideologies, like dogs, remain just outside the hermits door.

Hermits have no peer pressure.

A hermit is simply a person to whom civilization has failed to adjust itself.