Quotes from Jon Krakauer

TWO YEARS HE WALKS THE EARTH, NO PHONE, NO POOL, NO PETS, NO CIGARETTES. ULTIMATE FREEDOM. AN EXTREMIST. AN AESTHETIC VOYAGER WHOSE HOME IS THE ROAD….

passing: the righteous, fair-skinned Nephites, led by Nephi, and their bitter adversaries, the Lamanites, as the followers of Laman were known. The Lamanites were "an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety," whose behavior was so annoying to God that He cursed the whole lot of them with dark skin to punish them for their impiety.

with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them;

In trying to understand McCandless, I inevitably came to reflect on other, larger subjects as well: the grip wilderness has on the American imagination, the allure high-risk activities hold for young men of a certain mind, the complicated, highly charged bond that exists between fathers and sons. The result of this meandering inquiry is the book now before you.

He drifted past saguaros and alkali flats, camped beneath escarpments of naked Precambrian stone. In the distance spiky, chocolate-brown mountains floated on eerie pools of mirage.

Reuss would spend the remainder of his meteoric life on the move, living out of a backpack on very little money, sleeping in the dirt, cheerfully going hungry for days at a time.

Whatever motivated him, Lopsang's decision to tow a client didn't seem like a particularly serious mistake at the time. But it would end up being one of many little things—a slow accrual, compounding steadily and imperceptibly toward critical mass.

Some people have big dreams, some people have small dreams," he penned to a girl named Vanessa. "Whatever you have, the important thing is that you never stop dreaming." Doug

connoisseurs of geologic form

The LDS Church has annual revenues estimated at more than $6 billion, and

For a few minutes the roof of the bus remains visible among the stunted trees, a tiny white gleam in a wild green sea, growing smaller and smaller, and then it's gone.

As a young man, I was unlike McCandless in many important regards; most notably, I possessed neither his intellect nor his lofty ideals. But I believe we were similarly affected by the skewed relationships we had with out fathers. And I suspect we had a similar intensity, a similar heedlessness, a similar agitation of the soul.

There is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always more heroic than the hype.

will be thoroughly cleansed of Satan's minions—apostates

It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict. The bystander is forced to take a side. It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demand action, engagement, and remembering...

Suffice it to say that [Everest] has the most steep ridges and appalling precipices that I have ever seen, and that all the talk of an easy snow slope is a myth.… My darling this is a thrilling business altogether, I can't tell you how it possesses me, and what a prospect it is. And the beauty of it all! George Leigh Mallory, in a letter to his wife,  June 28, 1921

If the expansion of the LDS faith continues at its current pace, within sixty years governing the United States will become "impossible without Mormon cooperation," according to the eminent scholar Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University—and an unabashed admirer of Joseph Smith and the Mormons.

When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God's light shines on you..

Pat was a serious listener. He was one of the first people who really challenged my ideas: 'Do you really believe that? Why? Don't accept everything you read. You should question it all, take what makes sense, and throw away the rest.' He was constantly asking, 'Did you ever consider this? What about that?' He changed the way I thought. (quoting Russell Baer, Army Ranger.)

Solitude was a rare commodity on Everest, and I was grateful to be granted a bit of it on this day, in such a remarkable setting.

Traumatic memories have a number of unusual qualities. They are not encoded like the ordinary memories of adults in a verbal, linear narrative that is assimilated into an ongoing life story….[R]ather, they are encoded in the form of vivid sensations and images. It

narcissistic personality disorder, or NPD. According to DSM-IV, NPD is distinguished by a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy

Between 1840 and 1844 God instructed the prophet to marry some forty women.