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What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?

Jon Krakauer

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Jon Krakauer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 12
Explorer
Journalist
Mountaineer
Writer
Brookline
Massachusetts
Smiling
Arms
Running
Would

More quotes by Jon Krakauer

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Having stumbled upon a tolerable career, for the first time in my life I was actually living above the poverty line. My hunger to climb had been blunted, in short, by a bunch of small satisfactions that added up to something like happiness.
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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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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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If you're not a feminist, you're part of the problem.
Jon Krakauer
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The thing that is most beautiful about Antarctica for me is the light. It's like no other light on Earth, because the air is so free of impurities. You get drugged by it, like when you listen to one of your favorite songs. The light there is a mood-enhancing substance.
Jon Krakauer
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The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything.
Jon Krakauer
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I don't know what God is, or what God had in mind when the universe was set in motion. In fact, I don't know if God even exists, although I confess that I sometimes find myself praying in times of great fear, or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty.
Jon Krakauer
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Getting to the top of any given mountain was considered much less important than how one got there: prestige was earned by tackling the most unforgiving routes with minimal equipment, in the boldest style imaginable.
Jon Krakauer
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weeping...betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure.
Jon Krakauer
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Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon.
Jon Krakauer
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To the contrary: His life hummed with meaning and purpose. But the meaning he wrested from existence lay beyond the comfortable path: McCandless distrusted the value of things that came easily.
Jon Krakauer
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It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it.
Jon Krakauer
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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.
Jon Krakauer
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...books possess an ounce-of-weight to minute-of-entertainment ratio that compares quite favorably to intoxicants.
Jon Krakauer
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Now what is history? It is the centuries of systematic explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming death. That's why people discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, that's why they write symphonies.
Jon Krakauer
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The desert sharpened the sweet ache of his longing, amplified it, gave shape to it in sere geology and clean slant of light.
Jon Krakauer
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I mean, how can you not be a feminist if you have a brain in your head? If you’re not a feminist, then you’re a problem.
Jon Krakauer
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I was dimly aware that I might be getting in over my head. But that only added to the scheme’s appeal. That it wouldn’t be easy was the whole point.
Jon Krakauer
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There is nothing glamorous or romantic about war. It's mostly about random pointless death and misery.
Jon Krakauer
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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.
Jon Krakauer