JPDB23

“Sometimes it seemed that the Pacific Crest Trail was one long mountain I was ascending. That at my journey’s end at the Columbia River, I’d reach the trail’s summit, rather than its lowest point. This feeling of ascension wasn’t only metaphorical. It literally felt as if I were almost always, impossibly, going up. At times I almost wept with the relentlessness of it, my muscles and lungs searing with the effort. It was only when I thought I couldn’t go up any longer that the trail would level off and descend.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“We all have our own deserts. They may not be the same as my desert, but we all have to cross them to find a purpose in life and be free.”
― Yeonmi Park, In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom

“and I particularly loved biographies because they were about people who had to overcome obstacles or prejudices to get ahead. They made me think I could make it when nobody else believed in me, when even I didn’t believe in myself.”
― Yeonmi Park, In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom

“It’s then that the premonition hits me, stronger than any I’ve felt in a long time—stronger even than the one on August 8—and I lean forward and close my eyes as a cold sweat breaks out over my flesh. None of us are getting out of here alive.”
― Darcy Coates, Dead of Winter