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I'm intrigued by fanatics - people who are seduced by the promise, or the illusion, of the absolute.

Jon Krakauer

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Jon Krakauer
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: April 12
Explorer
Journalist
Mountaineer
Writer
Brookline
Massachusetts
Seduced
Fanatics
Intrigued
Absolutes
Absolute
Illusion
Promise
People

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Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics and others with a shaky hold on reality.
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Its not always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong.
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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.
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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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Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.
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Sometimes my need to love hurts-- myself, my family, my cause. Is there a cure? Of course. But I refuse. Refuse to stop loving, to stop caring. To avoid those tears, that pain...To err on the side of passion is human and right and the only way I'll live.
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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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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.
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...books possess an ounce-of-weight to minute-of-entertainment ratio that compares quite favorably to intoxicants.
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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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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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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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Heaven, for me, is one focused project - it's like a weird form of autism.
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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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There is nothing glamorous or romantic about war. It's mostly about random pointless death and misery.
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HAPPINESS is ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED
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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.
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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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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.
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If you're not a feminist, you're part of the problem.
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