Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jon Krakauer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 12
Explorer
Journalist
Mountaineer
Writer
Brookline
Massachusetts
Life
Activity
Tangible
Incumbents
Ordinary
Plane
Immutable
Achieve
Concrete
Tipping
Rest
Planes
Thrilled
Existence
Fresh
Hazards
Came
Mountain
Summit
Sorely
Purpose
Perspective
Seriousness
Incumbent
Ends
Missing
Achieving
Lent

More quotes by Jon Krakauer

Image
...books possess an ounce-of-weight to minute-of-entertainment ratio that compares quite favorably to intoxicants.
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
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
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
Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon.
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
But perhaps the greatest attraction of Mormonism was the promise that each follower would be granted an extraordinarily intimate relationship with God. Joseph taught and encouraged his adherents to receive personal communiqués straight from the Lord. Divine revelation formed the bedrock of the religion.
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
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
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
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
You should own nothing except what you can carry on your back at a dead run.
Jon Krakauer
Image
HAPPINESS is ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED
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
Heaven, for me, is one focused project - it's like a weird form of autism.
Jon Krakauer
Image
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.
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
But somethings in life are more important than being happy. Like being free to think for yourself.
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