Quotes from Jon Krakauer

If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.

Crusty old alpinists who've survived a lifetime of close scrapes like to counsel young protégés that staying alive hinges on listening carefully to one's "inner voice.

But there are men for whom the unattainable has a special attraction. Usually they are not experts: their ambitions and fantasies are strong enough to brush aside the doubts which more cautious men might have.

As Katie J. M. Baker observed in her Jezebel article, "In Missoula…drunk guys who may have 'made mistakes' nearly always get the benefit of the doubt. Drunk girls, however, do not.

Fundamentalists call defrauding the government "bleeding the beast" and regard it as a virtuous act.

But if he pitied himself in those last difficult hours–because he was so young, because he was alone, because his body had betrayed him and his will had let him down– it's not apparent from the photograph. He is smiling in the picture, and there is no mistaking the look in his eyes. Chris McCandless was at peace, serene as a monk gone to God.

Joseph wasn't by nature reflective or deliberative. He conducted his life impulsively, acting according to instinct and emotion. The Lord, it seemed to him, must surely have intended man to know the love of more than one wife or He wouldn't have made the prospect so enticing.

We like companionship, see, but we can't stand to be around people for very long. So we go get ourselves lost, come back for a while, then get the hell out again.

His denials had always gotten him off the hook before, but his repeated success at wiggling out of tight situations incubated a dangerous hubris, which in turn increased his sexual recklessness

So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy

Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.

A lot of us are like that—I'm like that, Ed Abbey was like that, and it sounds like this McCandless kid was like that: We like companionship, see, but we can't stand to be around people for very long. So we go get ourselves lost, come back for a while, then get the hell out again.

of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others. . .

Wallace Stegner noted in his classic biography of Powell, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian

There is a dark side to religious devotion that is too often ignored or denied. 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

Emma harangued Joseph so relentlessly about his philandering that the original intent of the revelation canonized as Section 132 seems to have been simply to persuade Emma to shut up and accept his plural wives—while at the same time compelling her to refrain from indulging in any extracurricular sex herself.

Felicità è vera soltanto se condivisa.

Unlike Muir and Thoreau, McCandless went into the wilderness not primarily to ponder nature or the world at large but, rather, to explore the inner country of his own soul. He soon discovered, however, what Muir and Thoreau already knew: An extended stay in the wilderness inevitably directs one's attention outward as much as inward, and it is impossible to live off the land without developing both a subtle understanding of, and a strong emotional bond with, that land and all it holds.

According to this mind-set, there can only be two precursors to rape: (1) A stranger jumps out from the bushes; (2) There is no rape unless the woman puts up a fight, to the death if necessary.

Rape is the most underreported serious crime in the nation.

papar decided the country had become too crowded—even though it

escala si quieres, pero recuerda que el coraje y la fuerza no son nada sin la prudencia, y que un descuido momentáneo puede destruir la felicidad de toda una vida. No hagas nada con precipitación; vigila cada paso que des, y, desde el principio, piensa en cuál puede ser el final.

drawn to a pursuit considered reckless by his elders;