We do not go into the desert to escape people but to learn how to find them; we do not leave them in order to have nothing to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good. But this is only a secondary end. The one end that includes all others is the love of God … However, the truest solitude is not something outside you…; it is an abyss opening up in the center of your own soul. And this abyss of interior solitude is a hunger that will never be satisfied with any created thing.
Thomas Merton
New Seeds of Contemplation
