Quote

Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.

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
Figures
Often
Sense
Hard
Sometimes
Make
World
Figure
People
Tried

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
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
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
Almost every magazine piece I've ever written, I felt like I haven't done it justice, like it was just a gloss.
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
To the contrary: His life hummed with meaning and purpose. But the meaning he wrested from existence lay beyond the comfortable path: McCandless distrusted the value of things that came easily.
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
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
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
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
weeping...betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure.
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
What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?
Jon Krakauer
Image
If you're not a feminist, you're part of the problem.
Jon Krakauer
Image
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.
Jon Krakauer
Image
When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God’s light shines through you.
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
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
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
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.
Jon Krakauer