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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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Jon Krakauer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 12
Explorer
Journalist
Mountaineer
Writer
Brookline
Massachusetts
Write
Mathematical
Symphonies
Death
Overcoming
Riddle
Writing
Wave
Systematic
People
Discover
Symphony
View
Waves
Views
Infinity
Century
Exploration
Explorations
History
Centuries
Electromagnetic

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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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When I start any book, I have no idea what I'm going to do.
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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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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.
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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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Short form media is reductionist by nature.
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When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God’s light shines through you.
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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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Mr. Franz, I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one.
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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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I'm intrigued by fanatics - people who are seduced by the promise, or the illusion, of the absolute.
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Heaven, for me, is one focused project - it's like a weird form of autism.
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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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Most climbers aren't in fact deranged, they're just infected with a particularly virulent strain of the Human Condition.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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