Jon Krakauer Into The Wild Quotes & Sayings

Party-mindedness" was "an almost mystical concept," explained Kopelev. "The indispensable prerequisites were iron discipline and faithful observance of all the rituals of Party life." As one veteran Communist put it, a Bolshevik was not someone who believed merely in Marxism but "someone who had absolute faith in the Party no matter what . . . A person with the ability to adapt his morality and conscience in such a way that he can unreservedly accept the dogma that the Party is never wrong - even though it's wrong all the time." Stalin did not exaggerate when he boasted: "We Bolsheviks are people of a special cut."2 Nadya — Simon Sebag Montefiore

[Chris] gave his life in exchange for knowledge and his story is his contribution to the world. I feel complete now to put this story behind me as it was on my mind for quite some time. — Krakauer Jon

Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around be nomadic, make each day a new horizon.
-Chris McCandless — Jon Krakauer

The fragility of crystal is not a weakness but a fineness. My parents understood that fine crystal glass had to be cared for or may be shattered. But when it came to my brother, they didn't seem to know or care that their course of their secret action brought the kind of devastation that could cut them. Their fraudulent marriage and our father's denial of his other son was for Chris a murder of every day's truth. He felt his whole life turned like a river suddenly reversing the direction of its flow. Suddenly running uphill. These revelations struck at the core of Chris's sense of identity. They made his entire childhood seem like fiction. Chris never told them he knew and made me promise silence as well. — Jon Krakauer

Basketball is a game. Baseball is a religion. Baseball is American. — Jerry Reinsdorf

A month later Billie sits at her dining room table, sifting through the pictorial record of Chris's final days. It is all she can do to force herself to examine the fuzzy snapshots. As she studies the pictures, she breaks down from time to time, weeping as only a mother who has outlived a child can weep, betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure. Such bereavement, witnessed at close range, makes even the most eloquent apologia for high-risk activities ring fatuous and hollow. - describing the mother of Chris McCandless after learning of his starvation in the wild — Jon Krakauer

From elementary school through high school, my siblings and I were hectored to excel in every class, to win medals in science fairs, to be chosen princess of the prom, to win election to student government. Thereby and only thereby, we learned, could we expect to gain admission to the right college, which in turn would get us into Harvard Medical School: life's one sure path to meaningful success and lasting happiness. — Jon Krakauer

There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree. The — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich; Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman; As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner; The Ten Thousand Things by Maria Dermout; My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir; The Land of Little Rain by Mary Austin; The Pacific Crest Trailside Reader by Rees Hughes and Corey Lewis; Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer; Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls; A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson; Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. — Cheryl Strayed

A story about the Jack Spratts of medicine [was] told recently by Dr. Charles H. Best, co-discoverer of insulin. He had been invited to a conference of heart specialists in North America. On the eve of the meeting, out of respect for the fat-clogs-the-arteries theory, the delegates sat down to a special banquet served without fats. It was unpalatable but they all ate it as a duty. Next morning Best looked round the breakfast room and saw these same specialists - all in the 40-60 year old, coronary age group - happily tucking into eggs, bacon, buttered toast and coffee with cream. — Richard Mackarness

But [Everett] and McCandless, at least they tried to follow their dream. That's what was great about them. They tried. Not many do. — Jon Krakauer

As I point out in the very first pages of 'Into the Wild,' I approached this book not as a normal, you know, unbiased journalist. — Jon Krakauer

Book lovers are not necessarily people lovers. — Murray Browne

He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight. — Jon Krakauer

The revelation that he was merely human, and frightfully so, was beyond my power to forgive. — Jon Krakauer

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. — Jon Krakauer

One of the chief duties which [the Christian] will punctually and carefully fulfill is the duty of prayer. You will remember in the Book of Acts, when Saul the persecutor was converted by a special miracle, the sign given of his conversion was this: "Behold he prayeth." (Acts 9:11). Prayer is the breath of the soul. Just as breathing is the sign of life, prayer is the sign of the life of the soul. — Henry Edward Manning

I now walk into the wild. — Jon Krakauer

I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams. — Jon Krakauer

Is this how you want me to kiss you?" Yet again he pressed his lips against hers, no tongues, no teeth, just the sweet, simple pleasure of being close to her. Her hands had moved to his thighs by then, and he didn't know if she realized how tightly she was gripping him, her fingers loosening every time he kissed her, then tightening when he drew back. "I really like it," she whispered against his lips a beat before she surprised him by saying, "but I want you to kiss me like this. — Anonymous

It's kind of a camaraderie in the comedy community, people are kind of proud of how badly they go down sometimes, and it's quite nice to join in with that. — Amy Hoggart

McCandless read and reread The Call of the Wild, White Fang, "To Build a Fire," "An Odyssey of the North," "The Wit of Porportuk." He was so enthralled by these tales, however, that he seemed to forget they were works of fiction, constructions of the imagination that had more to do with London's romantic sensibilities than with the actualities of life in the subarctic wilderness. McCandless conveniently overlooked the fact that London himself had spent just a single winter in the North and that he'd died by his own hand on his California estate at the age of forty, a fatuous drunk, obese and pathetic, maintaining a sedentary existence that bore scant resemblance to the ideals he espoused in print. — Jon Krakauer