Quote

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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Jon Krakauer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 12
Explorer
Journalist
Mountaineer
Writer
Brookline
Massachusetts
Longing
Desert
Shape
Sere
Shapes
Slant
Clean
Amplified
Gave
Sharpened
Sweet
Geology
Light
Ache

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I'm intrigued by fanatics - people who are seduced by the promise, or the illusion, of the absolute.
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When I start any book, I have no idea what I'm going to do.
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If you want a blank spot on the map, you gotta leave the map behind.
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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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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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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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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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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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Passion is what makes life interesting, what ignites our soul, drives our curiosity, fuels our love and carries our friendship, stimulates our intellect, and pushes our limit.... A passion for life is contagious and uplifting. Passion cuts both ways.... Those that make you feel on top of the world are equally able to turnit upside down.
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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.
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HAPPINESS is ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED
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Almost every magazine piece I've ever written, I felt like I haven't done it justice, like it was just a gloss.
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Mr. Franz, I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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You should own nothing except what you can carry on your back at a dead run.
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