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

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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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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.
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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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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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...books possess an ounce-of-weight to minute-of-entertainment ratio that compares quite favorably to intoxicants.
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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'm intrigued by fanatics - people who are seduced by the promise, or the illusion, of the absolute.
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You should own nothing except what you can carry on your back at a dead run.
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I love being outdoors, being in the mountains and the desert, and my wife enjoys that too. That's one of the things that sustain our relationship.
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HAPPINESS is ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED
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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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Heaven, for me, is one focused project - it's like a weird form of autism.
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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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Short form media is reductionist by nature.
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There is nothing glamorous or romantic about war. It's mostly about random pointless death and misery.
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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.
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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.
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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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Its not always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong.
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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.
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