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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.

Jon Krakauer

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Jon Krakauer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 12
Explorer
Journalist
Mountaineer
Writer
Brookline
Massachusetts
Path
Wrested
Existence
Lays
Came
Contrary
Purpose
Easily
Values
Meaning
Things
Value
Life
Comfortable
Distrusted
Beyond
Hummed

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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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Short form media is reductionist by nature.
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But now that I was finally here, standing on the summit of Mount Everest, I just couldn't summon the energy to care.
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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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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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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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What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?
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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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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.
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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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Most climbers aren't in fact deranged, they're just infected with a particularly virulent strain of the Human Condition.
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HAPPINESS is ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED
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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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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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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.
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Heaven, for me, is one focused project - it's like a weird form of autism.
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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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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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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.
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