Quote

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

Jon Krakauer

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Jon Krakauer

Image
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.
Jon Krakauer
Image
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
Image
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.
Jon Krakauer
Image
I'm intrigued by fanatics - people who are seduced by the promise, or the illusion, of the absolute.
Jon Krakauer
Image
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
Image
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
Image
But perhaps the greatest attraction of Mormonism was the promise that each follower would be granted an extraordinarily intimate relationship with God. Joseph taught and encouraged his adherents to receive personal communiqués straight from the Lord. Divine revelation formed the bedrock of the religion.
Jon Krakauer
Image
Short form media is reductionist by nature.
Jon Krakauer
Image
As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane-as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout-there may be no more potent force than religion.
Jon Krakauer
Image
HAPPINESS is ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED
Jon Krakauer
Image
If you want a blank spot on the map, you gotta leave the map behind.
Jon Krakauer
Image
Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon.
Jon Krakauer
Image
...books possess an ounce-of-weight to minute-of-entertainment ratio that compares quite favorably to intoxicants.
Jon Krakauer
Image
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
Image
The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything.
Jon Krakauer
Image
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
Image
That's what was great about him. He tried. Not many do.
Jon Krakauer
Image
If you're not a feminist, you're part of the problem.
Jon Krakauer
Image
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
Image
But now that I was finally here, standing on the summit of Mount Everest, I just couldn't summon the energy to care.
Jon Krakauer