Jon Krakauer Quotes

I was between 14 and 15, when I went through my angsty period. I was never very rebellious. I never did things to rebel against society, or against my parents, but I did think I knew everything. Then, one day, I woke up and realized I was a dot in this universe, and that quickly dissipated.

I always wanted to be good at something, to be somebody. The minute I got into my first play, which was called ''Excuse My Dust' - I was 17 at the time - I knew that this was what I'd been looking for.

Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Graham Greene - they influenced my life to a profound extent.

When I was 18 years old I went to Shakespeare Company, the school, and I wrote a poem about my leaves - I felt like a tree that had no leaves. That is the life at 18.

At one point I would read nothing that was not by the great American Jews - Saul Bellow, Philip Roth - which had a disastrous effect of making me think I needed to write the next great Jewish American novel. As a ginger-haired child in the West of Ireland, that didn't work out very well, as you can imagine.

I've read probably 25 or 30 books by Balzac, all of Tolstoy - the novels and letters - and all of Dickens. I learned my craft from these guys.

My father gave me Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment' when I was in junior high; my junior high, angst-filled soul responded to that.

I don't know what better teenage life you could get than going around the world doing what you love to do.

I discovered John Fante when I was 17 years old - strangely, not through Charles Bukowski, but through William Saroyan, who was his drinking buddy.

I've really been trying to go back to when I was 18 and rediscover the things that drove me, and my passions. How do I get back to being that strong? Because I feel like as I get older, I'm not as fearless as I was when I was 18.

People such as Hunter S. Thompson and the Beats were a huge influence on me, not just in what they were saying, but how they said it.

I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs - when I was 17 - that I realized I was talking through an empty skull... I wasn't thinking my own thoughts or saying my own thoughts.

At that stage my heart ruled my head

To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness

In general - especially in my youth - I was a bit wild.

Reading Bukowski and Burroughs and Henry Miller doesn't necessarily mean that a kid is going to try to emulate their debauchery to the point that Nic did, but he really was fascinated by it.

I've been influenced by so many different writers along the way - from Charles Dickens, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock, John D. McDonald, and so many others - that it would take a page or two to list them all.

My passion for film-making was bordering indulgence. But gone are those days when I was adventurous.

I was lucky enough at a young age to find out what I had a passion for, but whatever you've got a curiosity for, just give it a shot.

The only movies I want to do are the ones I'm passionate about. I care about school, and I'm still a kid. I want to live like that while I can.

I read a lot of science fiction, and it's ingrained, in a certain way, and I've been very involved with Kerouac and the Beats, but before that, it was a lot of science fiction.

I used to read a lot of Steinbeck, and I admired Roger Miller and Bob Dylan.

The choices a writer makes within a tradition - preferring Milton to Moliere, caring for Barth over Barthelme - constitute some of the most personal information we can have about him.

Happiness comes out of being willing to do your work in your twenties to find out who you are, what you love.

Some people wanted to get rich or famous, but my friends and I wanted to get real. We wanted to get deep. (Also, I suppose, we wanted to get laid.)