Quote

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.

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
Appreciate
Entrusted
Youth
Havoc
Marriage
Remained
Terrible
Geometry
Stage
Abstract
Euclidean
Death
Concept
Wreak
Didn
Concepts
Deceased
Heart
Hearts
Finality

More quotes by Jon Krakauer

Image
Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics and others with a shaky hold on reality.
Jon Krakauer
Image
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.
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
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.
Jon Krakauer
Image
I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.
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
I'm intrigued by fanatics - people who are seduced by the promise, or the illusion, of the absolute.
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
Image
That's what was great about him. He tried. Not many do.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God it's great to be alive! Thank you. Thank you.
Jon Krakauer
Image
Most climbers aren't in fact deranged, they're just infected with a particularly virulent strain of the Human Condition.
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
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.
Jon Krakauer