The real thing about being a hermit is of course that a hermit is outside all categories whatever. The hermit who succeeds, or thinks he can succeed, in simply having a recognisable niche - a nest of his own that everyone can account for and understand - may well be lacking an essential element of solitude. The hermit life is a kind of walking on water, in which one can no longer account for anything but one knows that one has not drowned and that this is to nobody's credit but God's. ...
From: Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for : Selected Spiritual Writings; p. 204; by Thomas Merton, M. Basil Pennington