Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by 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 desert sharpened the sweet ache of his longing, amplified it, gave shape to it in sere geology and clean slant of light.
Jon Krakauer
Image
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
Image
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.
Jon Krakauer
Image
weeping...betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure.
Jon Krakauer
Image
There is nothing glamorous or romantic about war. It's mostly about random pointless death and misery.
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
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
Heaven, for me, is one focused project - it's like a weird form of autism.
Jon Krakauer
Image
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
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
What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?
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
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
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
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
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
If you want a blank spot on the map, you gotta leave the map behind.
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
It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty.
Jon Krakauer