Jon Krakauer Quotes

I climbed nine mountains because I love adventure, and I got addicted to that feeling and I never wanted to stop. I wanted to see what I could accomplish. I finally can say that I stood on top of the world.

I like to think of Everest as a great mountaineering challenge, and when you've got people just streaming up the mountain - well, many of them are just climbing it to get their name in the paper, really.

The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this; What is the use of climbing Mount Everest? and my answer must at once be, it is no use. There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever.

On the summit of Everest, I had a feeling of great satisfaction to be first there.

Not to be too grandiose about it, but in a way I see myself like Sir Edmund Hillary. The water was my Everest.

I'm not the kind of person who's going to look at the top of a mountain and go, 'Oh, look at that! That's lovely. That's lovely, that top of that mountain.' I'm the kind of person who's going to go, 'Oh, my God! That's so lovely! Let's go climb up it!'

I'm kind of obsessed by Everest and all those men that mountaineer and take themselves to extreme limits.

I'm done with Everest. I did it three times, and I need to be good at that and be happy with it and focus on other climbs.

Climbing the mountain is always more fun than sitting at the top. It's just you have to find different mountains to climb.

There's intense personal gratification in finding a mountain and becoming inspired by the aesthetics of an unclimbed line on that mountain, especially if that line has been tried by a lot of people who couldn't do it, and you get to set yourself up against the history of it.

There's no glory in climbing a mountain if all you want to do is to get to the top. It's experiencing the climb itself - in all its moments of revelation, heartbreak, and fatigue - that has to be the goal.

There is no joy involved in climbing mountains, there is simply the challenge, the self-invented challenge, the play.

- Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest, Sir? - Because it is there.

Because it's there. (when asked why he wanted to climb Everest)

Climbing is unadulterated hard labor. The only real pleasure is the satisfaction of going where no man has been before and where few can follow.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn't the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

I wanted something different; I wanted something that challenged me and that pushed me further. Then this idea of climbing Mount Everest came to my mind. It stuck in my head for days. Someone told me I couldn't do it, and that really annoyed me.

Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.

Why, I'd like nothing better than to achieve some bold adventure, worthy of our trip.

When you go to the mountains, you see them and you admire them. In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them.

Anytime you finish a climb, there's always the next thing you can try.

I'm not good at being static. I have to be climbing a mountain.

I used to climb mountains a lot; I decided to go to Pakistan to climb K2, the world's second-highest mountain. I didn't get quite to the top.

Meeting Australian mountaineer and author Tim Macartney-Snape when I was 16 in 1994 had a big impact on me. His ascent of Everest from sea to summit captured my imagination.

Men climb mountains, scale heights, venture into the unexplored to prove to other men it can be done.