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Mr. Franz, I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one.

Jon Krakauer

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Jon Krakauer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 12
Explorer
Journalist
Mountaineer
Writer
Brookline
Massachusetts
Invention
Careers
Century
Think
Thinking
Franz

More quotes by Jon Krakauer

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It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty.
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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.
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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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What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?
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HAPPINESS is ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED
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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.
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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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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.
Jon Krakauer
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At that stage of my youth, death remained as abstract a concept as non-Euclidean geometry or marriage. I didn't yet appreciate its terrible finality or the havoc it could wreak on those who'd entrusted the deceased with their hearts.
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weeping...betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure.
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I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.
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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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Sometimes my need to love hurts-- myself, my family, my cause. Is there a cure? Of course. But I refuse. Refuse to stop loving, to stop caring. To avoid those tears, that pain...To err on the side of passion is human and right and the only way I'll live.
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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Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.
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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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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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
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When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God’s light shines through you.
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