Antarctica Quotes

“Antarctica. You know, that giant continent at the bottom of the earth that’s ruled by penguins and seals.”
― C.B. Cook, Twinepathy

“ i had a dream when i was 22 that someday i would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till i came to one of the poles of the earth”
― Ernest Shackleton

“Take it all in all, I do not believe anybody on Earth has it worse than an Emperor penguin.”
― Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World

“Playing the game means treating your dogs like gentlemen, and your gentlemen like dogs.”
― Ted Tally, Terra Nova

“They thought of home, naturally, but there was no burning desire to be in civilization for its own sake. Worsley recorded: "Waking on a fine morning I feel a great longing for the smell of dewy wet grass and flowers of a Spring morning in New Zealand or England. One has very few other longings for civilization—good bread and butter, Munich beer, Coromandel rock oysters, apple pie and Devonshire cream are pleasant reminiscences rather than longings.”
― Alfred Lansing, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

“Then he opened the Bible Queen Alexandra had given them and ripped out the flyleaf and the page containing the Twenty-third Psalm. He also tore out the page from the Book of Job with this verse on it:

Out of whose womb came the ice?
And the hoary frost of Heaven, who hath gendered it?
The waters are hid as with a stone.
And the face of the deep is frozen.

The he laid the Bible in the snow and walked away.
It was a dramatic gesture, but that was the way Shackleton wanted it. From studying the outcome of past expeditions, he believed that those that burdened themselves with equipment to meet every contingency had fared much worse than those that had sacrificed total preparedness for speed.”
― Alfred Lansing, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

“Man, this is the world’s worst workout program. The Drag Your Own Butter.”
― Adriana Anders, Whiteout

“I’d do anything to be inside you right now.”
― Adriana Anders, Whiteout

“A forbidding-looking place, certainly, but that only made it seem the more pitiful. It was the refuge of twenty-two men who, at that very moment, were camped on a precarious, storm-washed spit of beach, as helpless and isolated from the outside world as if they were on another planet. Their plight was known only to the six men in this ridiculously little boat, whose responsibility now was to prove that all the laws of chance were wrong—and return with help. It was a staggering trust.”
― Alfred Lansing, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

“All in the immediate vicinity of the ship, is the blackness of eternal night, and a chaos of foamless water; but, about a league on either side of us, may be seen, indistinctly and at intervals, stupendous ramparts of ice, towering away into the desolate sky, and looking like the walls of the universe.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, MS. Found in a Bottle

“We’re heading out into the most dangerous place on earth with killers after us?”

“Yeah.” He couldn’t help a grim smirk. “Better hit the road.”
― Adriana Anders, Whiteout

“Suddenly, he understood why he couldn’t have her back then, or now. Or ever.

He was a starving man and she was an oasis, a hallucination, a single sparkling drop of water in his desiccated world. And the problem with giving in, drinking that water, getting just one little taste, was that he’d know exactly what he’d been missing. And he’d never, ever be able to go back.”
― Adriana Anders, Whiteout

“He’d touched her, felt her skin, seen her pleasure, and it scared the living hell out of him. She’d burn him if she got too close. And he wasn’t sure he’d survive it.”
― Adriana Anders, Whiteout

“Cooking’s like making music.” She threw him a smile. “It’s the perfect storm of smell and touch and taste and even sound, you know? That sizzle in the pan, the pop of spices. The moment you turn the heat off and there, right there, the ingredients let off a warm, enveloping steam.”

“I eat to survive,” he said, matter-of-factly.

She opened her mouth, then shut it. Was it sad to eat for survival? That was exactly what they were doing right here and the pleasure of it was almost blinding.”
― Adriana Anders, Whiteout

“The Ice Man… cometh.”
― Adriana Anders, Whiteout

“The albatross hit the top and canted her soft belly to the storm, and made a screaming banked peel-out downwind and over the other side. I don't know if anyone else on the ship saw her. To me, she was a visitation. Not harbinger or annunciation, but a simple reminder of a wold that worked, that was at home with itself and friends with storm.”
― Peter Heller, The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals

“There was a reason he’d avoided Angel Smith. Already, she’d started seeping under his skin, making him feel things he preferred not to think about.

And it felt so good it scared him.”
― Adriana Anders, Whiteout

“On the ice, in the Antarctic cold, in the middle of freaking nowhere, his tongue showed her how dirty sex could be, his body made her take it, and that dark, raspy husk of a voice broke in to turn the whole thing up a million degrees.”
― Adriana Anders, Whiteout

“I thought you were a jerk.”

He shook with an unexpected burst of laughter. “I know.” He squeezed her tight, trying to figure out how to keep her alive. “I know.”
― Adriana Anders, Whiteout

“He rose. “Come here.”

Like a moth to a flame, mesmerized, or hypnotized, or something. Angel went to him, giving herself up to Ford Cooper’s ephemeral net.”
― Adriana Anders, Whiteout

“He moved in, set his chin on her shoulder, and whispered, “I can’t…”

When he didn’t go on, she turned a little to the right, enough to put the tips of their noses together. “Can’t what?”

“Can’t stop wanting you.”
― Adriana Anders, Whiteout

“You feel a loss of control?”

“Never… Never had control to begin with.”
― Adriana Anders, Whiteout

“Penguins are Antarctica's Pekin duck, and Admiral Byrd just sent me a telegram telling me he wants me to come down there and teach him how to ice fish. The trick is not gluing the bananas to your wetsuit, and keeping the volume of The Golden Girls set at 33.”
― Jarod Kintz, Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.

“The simple act of sailing had carried him beyond the world of reversals, frustrations, and inanities. And in the space of a few short hours, life had been reduced from a highly complex existence, with a thousand petty problems, to one of the barest simplicity in which only one real task remained—the achievement of the goal.”
― Alfred Lansing, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

“Messner: – Avvistiamo la base americana sulla costa, la McMurdo. Ce l’abbiamo fatta. … Il primo americano mi chiede se abbiamo realizzato un record. … Il primo giapponese fotografa il mio equipaggiamento. … Il primo italiano mi abbraccia. … Il primo russo vuole bere vodka insieme. … Il primo francese chiede se dei francesi hanno già compiuto quel viaggio prima di noi. … Il primo britannico chiede se abbiamo trainato noi le slitte. … Il primo tedesco che incontro mi chiede: “Perché?” … Non so rispondergli.”
― Michele Petrucci, Messner: La montagna, il vuoto, la fenice

“As it was he had moods and depressions which might last for weeks. And of these there is ample evidence in diary. The man with the nerves gets things done but sometimes he has a terrible time in doing them. " Written about Scott in Chapter 6”
― Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World Antarctic 1910-1913

“What the continents had in common was far less important than what was different. To be successful on the peaks it was more important to learn intuitively and adapt to the new cultures and climbing conditions, than to ascend relying on past experience.”
― Robert Mads Anderson, To Everest Via Antarctica: Climbing Solo on the Highest Peak on Each of the World's Seven Continents

“Looking into space from Antarctica feels like looking into space from space. On a night like this--no wind, no weather, no moon--the smear of the Milky Way looks more like a celestial fire, brimming with colors you'd never see from anyplace else on Earth.”
― Blake Crouch, Recursion

“Next morning, when I got up, the inside temperature was 30° below zero. The new arrangement was working quite nicely indeed.”
― Richard Evelyn Byrd, Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure

“All the facts are united by a mysterious chain.”
― Jules Verne