Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakaueris an American writer and mountaineer, primarily known for his writings about the outdoors, especially mountain-climbing. He is the author of best-selling non-fiction books—Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, Under the Banner of Heaven, and Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman—as well as numerous magazine articles. He was a member of an ill-fated expedition to summit Mount Everest in 1996, which became known as the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, one of the deadliest disasters in the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth12 April 1954
CountryUnited States of America
Heaven, for me, is one focused project - it's like a weird form of autism.
I love being outdoors, being in the mountains and the desert, and my wife enjoys that too. That's one of the things that sustain our relationship.
I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.
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.
But now that I was finally here, standing on the summit of Mount Everest, I just couldn't summon the energy to care.
If you're not a feminist, you're part of the problem.
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.
Mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.
And if I remain in the dark about our purpose here, and the meaning of eternity, I have nevertheless arrived at an understanding of a few more modest truths: Most of us fear death. Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got here, and why-- which is to say, most of us ache to know the love of our creator. And we will no doubt feel that ache, most of us, for as long as we happen to be alive.
You should own nothing except what you can carry on your back at a dead run.
...books possess an ounce-of-weight to minute-of-entertainment ratio that compares quite favorably to intoxicants.
Antarctica is a very alien environment, and you can't survive here more than minutes if you're not equipped properly and doing the right thing all the time.
Once you believe that God is speaking directly to you, there is no discussion.
You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.