Quote

There is nothing glamorous or romantic about war. It's mostly about random pointless death and misery.

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
Nothing
Pointless
Glamorous
Random
Mostly
Romantic
Misery
War
Death

More quotes by Jon Krakauer

Image
When I start any book, I have no idea what I'm going to do.
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
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
Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics and others with a shaky hold on reality.
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
HAPPINESS is ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED
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
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
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
Heaven, for me, is one focused project - it's like a weird form of autism.
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
Mr. Franz, I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one.
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
Its not always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong.
Jon Krakauer
Image
The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything.
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
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
If you want a blank spot on the map, you gotta leave the map behind.
Jon Krakauer
Image
weeping...betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure.
Jon Krakauer
Image
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.
Jon Krakauer