Jon Krakauer Quotes

Meteorite hunting is not for wimps. The best places to look are also the coldest and windiest. You need very old ice, and you need wind, lots of it, strong and unrelenting. Antarctica fits the bill.

The swim at Deception Island was by far the hardest swim I've ever done. Antarctica is a very unforgiving environment. If you don't train properly, you'll die.

Watching a documentary with people hacking their way through some polar wasteland is merely a visual. Actually trying to deal with cold that can literally kill you is quite a different thing.

Some days I would go without any fire at all, and eat raw frozen meat and melt snow in my mouth for water.

Siberia is a state of mind.

We were working under very harsh conditions on 'Zero Kelvin.' We were up there in the Arctic, closer to the North Pole than to a hospital. Sometimes you had to sleep in small Arctic tents with guns to protect yourself from polar bears and stuff.

Everything is on a reduced scale here in the Polar regions; we can't afford to be extravagant.

I swear, Daimons or not, if you don’t behave, Z, I’m going to send you to Antarctica and leave you there to rot. (Acheron) Ooo. I’m terrified. Those killer penguins and hairy seals are really scary. (Zarek)

I might survive a few days at sea. Probably not as long as Pi.

Someone asked me, if I were stranded on a desert island what book would I bring... 'How to Build a Boat.'

If it's enough money, I'll play the North Pole.

Were it believed that vacant places could be had at the North Pole, the road there would be lined with dead Virginians.

The Australian Outback can be quite unforgiving.

We were marooned in a frozen desert. There was not a sign of life on the horizon and a thousand signs of death... The marvel is we did not all die of cold.

New York cold gets into your bones, and you can't move.

Trapped' is the story of a guy stuck in an apartment with no food, no water and no electricity, and of his survival based on his primal instincts.

The mountains are a demanding, cold place, and they don't allow for mistakes.

I have a very different fear if I'm all alone in the summit area of Mount Everest and if I know that there is nothing below me, no Sherpa, no tent, no rope.

Three days doesn't sound like a very long time, and under normal, everyday circumstances, it's not - but under POW camp conditions, it doesn't take long to wear down a man's sanity.

It drove me crazy, Scotland. It was cold. It was abuse. It was snowing and everything. I was so cold that one day I faked an injury to go to the locker room.

Yorkshire weather can turn quickly. At one Auld Lang Syne race, it dropped to -16C. The frost turned everybody's hair grey. I couldn't take my shoes off, as my laces had frozen solid.

The Mojave is a big desert and a frightening one. It’s as though nature tested a man for endurance and constancy to prove whether he was good enough to get to California.

You can't stay in the desert, you go nuts after 24 hours.

One had to build shelters. One had to make pockets and live inside them.

It was cold out there, bitter, biting, cutting, piercing, hyperborean, marmoreal cold, and there were all these Minnesotans running around outdoors, happy as lambs in the spring.