You should own nothing except what you can carry on your back at a dead run.

Passion is what makes life interesting, what ignites our soul, drives our curiosity, fuels our love and carries our friendship, stimulates our intellect, and pushes our limit.... A passion for life is contagious and uplifting. Passion cuts both ways.... Those that make you feel on top of the world are equally able to turnit upside down.

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

The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything.

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.

Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence — the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes — all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand.

It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it.