Alaska Quotes

“She said, "It's not life or death, the labyrinth."
"Um, okay. So what is it?"
"Suffering," she said. "Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That's the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?... Nothing's wrong. But there's always suffering, Pudge. Homework or malaria or having a boyfriend who lives far away when there's a good-looking boy lying next to you. Suffering is universal. It's the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“I'm really not up for answering any questions that start with how, when, where, why or what.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“Here's a tip, Alyconeus. Next time you choose the biggest state for your home, don't set up base in the part that's only 10 miles wide.
Welcome to Canada, idiot.”
― Rick Riordan, The Son of Neptune

“Right, well, he'd been sick for a while and his nurse said to him, 'You seem to be feeling better this morning,' and Isben looked at her and said, 'On the contrary,' and then he died.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“As Alaska zipped through something obvious about linear equations, stoner/baller Hank Walsten said, "Wait, wait. I don't get it."

"That's because you have eight functioning brain cells."

"Studies show that Marijuana is better for your health than those cigarettes," Hank said.

Alaska swallowed a mouthful of fries, took a drag on her cigarette, and blew a smoke at Hank. "I may die young," she said. "But at least I'll die smart. Now, back to tangents.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“But why Alaska?' I asked her.

'Well, later, I found out what it means. It's from an Aleut word, Alyeska. It means 'that which the sea breaks against,' and I love that. But at the time, I just saw Alaska up there. And it was big, just like I wanted to be.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“You can't just make me different and then leave”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“As I’ve learned from life, happiness sometimes only greets us in fits and starts. For tragedy often follows merriment. Without strife, we would not know the true meaning of gaiety. That’s what I like to tell myself to ease the pain.”
― Lee Matthew Goldberg, The Ancestor

“She has great breasts," the Colonel said without looking up from the whale.
"DO NOT OBJECTIFY WOMEN'S BODIES!" Alaska shouted.
Now he looked up. "Sorry. Perky breasts."
"That's not any better!”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“I’m just scared of ghosts, Pudge. And home is full of them.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“Under the lake by Anvil Creek, a man has been frozen much like another man in the same wilderness had been frozen, in this area of Alaska where silence is the loudest sound.”
― Lee Matthew Goldberg, The Ancestor

“The heater spits a chorus of steam, his bones no longer brittle and cold. The ice man melted, a new form waiting to emerge once all the crystals get shaken away.”
― Lee Matthew Goldberg, The Ancestor

“The climate of Barrow is Arctic. Temperatures range from cold as shit to fucking freezing.”
― Steve Niles, 30 Days of Night

“AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!' he screamed.
'So that's Sara,' I said.
'Yes.'
'She seems nice.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“The pigs can't stop the fox; I'm too quick,' Takumi said to himself. "I can rhyme while I run; I'm that slick.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“The name Alaska is probably an abbreviation of Unalaska, derived from the original Aleut word agunalaksh, which means "the shores where the sea breaks its back." The war between water and land is never-ending. Waves shatter themselves in spent fury against the rocky bulwarks of the coast; giant tides eat away the sand beaches and alter the entire contour of an island overnight; williwaw winds pour down the side of a volcano like snow sliding off a roof, building to a hundred-mile velocity in a matter of minutes and churning the ocean into a maelstrom where the stoutest vessels founder.”
― Corey Ford, Where the Sea Breaks Its Back: The Epic Story of the Early Naturalist Georg Steller and the Russian Exploration of Alaska

“She raised her head again. "Aren't you supposed to come over all manly man and forbid the little lady from taking such risks with her fragile self?"
"I like my balls right where they are," he said, and she laughed and put her head back down on his chest.

Kate Shugak to Jim Chopin
Though Not Dead”
― Dana Stabenow

“The following obituary appeared in the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph of Sept. 16, 1958:

A GREAT POET died last week in Lancieux, France, at the age of 84.

He was not a poet's poet. Fancy-Dan dilletantes will dispute the description "great."

He was a people's poet. To the people he was great. They understood him, and knew that any verse carrying the by-line of Robert W. Service would be a lilting thing, clear, clean and power-packed, beating out a story with a dramatic intensity that made the nerves tingle.

And he was no poor, garret-type poet, either. His stuff made money hand over fist. One piece alone, The Shooting of Dan McGrew, rolled up half a million dollars for him. He lived it up well and also gave a great deal to help others.

"The only society I like," he once said, "is that which is rough and tough - and the tougher the better. That's where you get down to bedrock and meet human people."

He found that kind of society in the Yukon gold rush, and he immortalized it.”
― Robert Service

“It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia.”
― Sarah Palin

“But three cheers for Alaska, they've got 24-hour hot fucking bear delivery.
Note to self: Nuke Alaska.”
― Mykle Hansen, HELP! A Bear is Eating Me!

“With all the global warming going around nowadays, it would only take the stubbornness of a mule and the patience of a sitting duck to achieve what no man has ever done before – namely melt the ice in a wax figure’s beaten heart that was chopped off and hidden 50 meters under the polar ice caps in Alaska, to protect it from feeling.”
― Will Advise, Nothing is here...

“The size of the land can be humbling. It puts my human existence into perspective, not in the sense of feeling like a bug on the windshield of life, but more a feeling of belonging to something too big to comprehend. The times when I have a view of the broad vistas sometimes make me feel as big as the land. I love the size of the land, how it rolls on and on, untamed and for the most part untouched.”
― Libby Riddles, Race Across Alaska: First Woman to Win the Iditarod Tells Her Story

“Alaska...The new USA farm belt!”
― Steven Magee

“Because she of all people knew that fire had two faces: the one that said home, and the one that burned things down.”
― Nick Lake, Nowhere on Earth

“Looked around at the wind-blasted peaks and the swirls of mist moving past them. It was hard to take my eyes away. I had been up on some of them, and I would be up there again. There was something different to see each time, and something different from each one. All those streamlets to explore and all those tracks to follow through the glare of the high basins and over the saddles. Where did they lead? What was beyond? What stories were written in the snow? I watched an eagle turn slowly and fall away, quick-sliding across the dark stands of spruce that marched in uneven ranks up the slopes. His piercing cry came back on the wind. I thought of the man at his desk staring down from a city window at the ant colony streets below, the man toiling beside the thudding and rumbling of machinery, the man commuting to his job the same way at the same time each morning, staring at but not seeing the poles and the wires and the dirty buildings flashing past. Perhaps each man had his moment during the day when his vision came, a vision not unlike the one before me.”
― Richard Proenekke, More Readings from One Man's Wilderness: The Journals of Richard L. Proenneke, 1974-1980

“A part of me wanted life to be like this always: just me and my dogs, alone in this vast, silent country, our goals always sure, living out of the sled day after day. This was the most seductive feature of the Iditarod, the reason I would come back time and time again, despite all the suffering that went along with it: the intimacy I had with those fine animals… and with the magnificent land of the Alaska.”
― Libby Riddles, Race Across Alaska: First Woman to Win the Iditarod Tells Her Story

“They seemed to be losing heart with every howl of the storm, and fearing that they might fail me now that I was in the midst of so grand a congregation of glaciers, which possibly I might not see again, I made haste to reassure them, telling them that for ten years I had wandered alone among mountains and storms, and that good luck always followed me; that with me, therefore, they need fear nothing; that the storm would soon cease, and the sun would shine; and that Heaven cared for us, and guided us all the time, whether we knew it or not: but that only brave men had a right to look for Heaven's care, therefore all childish fear must be put away.”
― John Muir, Discovery of Glacier Bay

“Be so good they can't ignore you. (Steve Martin)

Direction is so much more important than speed.”
― Janelle Meraz Hooper, Geronimo's Laptop: A Historical Fantasy

“Genie understood that everyone would be trapped together inside this crippled city for the foreseeable future--in the snow, in the dark, with no electricity, in below-freezing temperatures. Under those circumstances, she felt 'mass hysteria would have meant total destruction.' (pg. 79)”
― Jon Mooallem, This Is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City, a Voice That Held It Together

“Leni couldn't begin to understand the hows and whys of her parents' love. She was old enough to see the turbulent surface, but too young to know what lay beneath.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Great Alone