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The endless, agonizing recycling of what might have been, soon followed by a litany of rationalizations and self-deceptions as you struggle to reconcile the void between the person you want to be and the person you fear you are.

Jon Krakauer

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Jon Krakauer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 12
Explorer
Journalist
Mountaineer
Writer
Brookline
Massachusetts
Might
Followed
Self
Void
Rationalizations
Endless
Litany
Soon
Deceptions
Struggle
Agonizing
Fear
Recycling
Persons
Reconcile
Person
Deception

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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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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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Its not always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong.
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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.
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The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything.
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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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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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weeping...betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure.
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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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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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When I start any book, I have no idea what I'm going to do.
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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.
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Short form media is reductionist by nature.
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Heaven, for me, is one focused project - it's like a weird form of autism.
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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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What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?
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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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I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.
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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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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.
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