Jon Krakauer Quotes
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If you want a blank spot on the map, you gotta leave the map behind.
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I think I understand that religious faith which makes the holy brave and strong; my strength is just somewhere else--it's in myself...I do not fear what may await me, though I'm equally confident that nothing awaits.
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That's what was great about him. He tried. Not many do.
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What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?
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I'm going to paraphrase Thoreau here... rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth.
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He needed his solitude at times, but he wasn't a hermit. He did a lot of socializing. Sometimes I think it was like he was storing up company for the times when he knew nobody would be around.
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According to the moral absolutism that characterizes McCandless's beliefs, a challenge in which a successful outcome is assured isn't a challenge at all.
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But somethings in life are more important than being happy. Like being free to think for yourself.
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Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their loves. The bush is an unforgiving place, however, that care nothing for hope or longing.
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Achieving the summit of a mountain was tangible, immutable, concrete. The incumbent hazards lent the activity a seriousness of purpose that was sorely missing from the rest of my life. I thrilled in the fresh perspective that came from the tipping the ordinary plane of existence on end.
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When a young person is moved by a passion and feels compelled to go on this sort of quest, I think you have to let him. You can't stop him. In our culture we don't have formal rights of passage like in some ancient cultures. Subjecting yourself to risk... may be something you have to go through to be a man or a woman.
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My reasoning, if one can call it that, was inflamed by the scatter shot passions of youth and a literary diet overly rich in the works of Nietzshe, Kerouac, and John Menlove Edwards.
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Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon.
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Common sense is no match for the voice of God.
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Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long timeand it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience.My point is that you do not need me or anyone elseThe only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness
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Most climbers aren't in fact deranged, they're just infected with a particularly virulent strain of the Human Condition.
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Above the comforts of Base Camp, the expedition in fact became an almost Calvinistic undertaking. The ratio of misery to pleasure was greater by an order of magnitude than any mountain I'd been on; I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking above all else, something like a state of grace.
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The endless, agonizing recycling of what might have been, soon followed by a litany of rationalizations and self-deceptions as you struggle to reconcile the void between the person you want to be and the person you fear you are.
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When I start any book, I have no idea what I'm going to do.
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Military investigations are designed not to find anyone guilty.
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The sad end he met in Afghanistan was more accurately a function of his stubborn idealism - his insistence on trying to do the right thing. In which case it wasn't a tragic flaw that brought Tillman down, but a tragic virtue.
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HAPPINESS is ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED
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You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only...from human relationships. God has placed it all around us...and all you have to do is reach for it.
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Although the far territory of the extreme can exert an intoxicating pull on susceptible individuals of all bents, extremism seems to be especially prevalent among those inclined by temperament or upbringing toward religious pursuits. Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off.
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I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.
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But now that I was finally here, standing on the summit of Mount Everest, I just couldn't summon the energy to care.
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Children can be harsh judges when it comes to their parents, disinclined to grant clemency.
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There is something special about a quiet untouched forest that just pulls you into the moment. Something that no parks will ever be able to achieve. Isn't that what we're all searching for in life? To just be happy and content in the moment, to just be there in the "now"?
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Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.
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If you don't take it, I'm going to throw it away," Alex cheerfully retorted. "I don't want to know what time it is. I don't want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that matters.
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