McCandless vs. Thoreau Quote 5

      "On the face of it, Bullhead City doesn't seem like the kind of place that would appeal to an adherent of Thoreau and Tolstoy, and ideologue who expressed nothing but contempt for the bourgeois trappings of mainstream America. McCandless, nevertheless, took a strong liking to Bullhead. Maybe it was his affinity for the lumpen, who were well represented in the community's trailer parks and campgrounds and laundromats; perhaps he simply fell in love with the stark desert landscape that encircles the town."4
Chapter 5. Page 39. Paragraph 3.

McCandless vs. Thoreau Quote 4

      "Shortly after the moose episode McCandless began to read Thoreau's Walden. In the chapter titled "Higher Laws," in which Thoreau ruminates on the morality of eating, McCandless highlighted, "when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than in came to."

Chapter 16. Page 167. Paragraph 6. 

McCandless vs. Thoreau Quote 3

      "Chastity and moral purity were qualities McCandless mulled over long and often. Indeed, one of the books found in the bus with his remains was a collection of stories that included Tolstoy's "The Kreutzer Sonata," in which the nobleman-turned-ascetic denounces "the demands of the flesh." Several such passages are starred and highlighted in the dog-eared text, the margins filled with cryptic notes printed in McCandless's distinctive hand. And in the chapter on "Higher Laws" in Thoreau's Walden, a copy of which was also discovered in the bus, McCandless circled "Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it."
Chapter 7. Page 65-66. Paragraph 4.

McCandless vs. Thoreau Quote 2

      "No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal,-that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are highest reality.... The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment if the rainbow which i have clutched." (Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods, Passage Highlighted In One Of The Books Found with Chris McCandless's Remains)
Chapter 6. Page 47. Paragraph 1.

McCandless vs. Thoreau Quote 1

      "Lori Zarza, the second manager, has a somewhat different impression of McCandless. "Frankly, I was surprised he ever got hired," she says. "He could do the job-he cooked in the back-but he always worked at the same slow pace, even during the lunch rush, no matter how much you'd get on him to hurry it up. Customers would be stacked ten-deep at the counter, and he wouldn't understand why I was on his case. He just didn't make the connection. it was like he was off in his own universe."
Chapter 5. Page 40. Paragraph 3.

Krakauer’s attitude toward McCandless Quote 5

      "Unlike Muir and Thoreau, McCandless went into the wilderness not primarily to ponder nature or the world at large but, rather, to explore the inner country of his own soul. He soon discovered, however, what Muir and Thoreau already knew: An extended stay in the wilderness inevitably directs one's attention outward as much as inward, and it is impossible to live off the land without developing both a subtle understanding of, and a strong emotional bond with, that land and all it holds."
Chapter 17. Page 183. Paragraph 3.

Krakauer’s attitude toward McCandless Quote 4

      "The boy made some mistakes on the Stampede Trail, but confusing a caribou with a moose wasn't among them."
Chapter 17. Page 178. Paragraph 1.