According to the moral absolutism that characterizes McCandless's beliefs, a challenge in which a successful outcome is assured isn't a challenge at all.

Some people feel like they don't deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.

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.

I'm going to paraphrase Thoreau here... rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth.

What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?

Mr. Franz, I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one.

I read somewhere... how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong... to measure yourself at least once.

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

Happiness [is] only real when shared

When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God’s light shines upon you.

I don’t want to know what time it is. I don’t want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that matters.

Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.

Haven’t I proved to you yet that I don’t give a damn about your missing parts?

Look at the longing, the anguish of a sad fossil world / that cannot find the accent of its first sob.

A salary is a tax employers pay, every four weeks, for putting an employee’s dream on hold.

A beautiful girl in the library whispered to herself, "I too peek from the book shelves, but I can't stare longer.

As I speak to you today, government censors somewhere are working furiously to erase my words from the records of history. But history itself has already condemned these tactics.

There's a balance between what you want to give the world and what it needs. If you're lucky, your work is in the middle.

If I were an animal, I would be an eagle.

When the past has taught us that we have more within us than we have ever used, our prayer is a cry to the divine to come to us and fill us with its power.