Laurence Gonzales

“Everyone who dies out there dies of confusion.”

“The sun beams are always there. The trick is in seeing them.”

“To lose everything at such a glorious eternity is far sweeter than to win by plodding through a cautious, painless, featureless life.”

“I am constantly surrounded by a display of natural wonders...It is beauty surrounded by ugly fear. I write in my log that it's a view of heaven from a seat in hell. (survivor after 53 days at sea)”

“To deal with reality you must first recognize it as such.”

“Survival is the celebration of choosing life over death. We know we're going to die. We all die. But survival is saying: perhaps not today. In that sense, survivors don't defeat death, they come to terms with it.”

“The word 'experienced' often refers to someone who's gotten away with doing the wrong thing more frequently than you have.”

“But what is the way forward? I know what it isn't. It's not, as we once believed, plenty to eat and a home with all the modern conveniences. It's not a 2,000-mile-long wall to keep Mexicans out or more accurate weapons to kill them. It's not a better low-fat meal or a faster computer speed. It's not a deodorant, a car, a soft drink, a skin cream. The way forward is found on a path through the wilderness of the head and heart---reason and emotion. Thinking, knowing, understanding.”

“Bureaucracies force us to practice nonsense. And if you rehearse nonsense, you may one day find yourself the victim of it.”

“With the illusion that we have dominion over the earth we conclude we have nothing to fear.”

“The summit is not the only place on the mountain.”

“We don't understand the power of nature and the world because we don't live with it. Our environment is designed to sustain us. We are the domestic pets of a human zoo called civilization.”