Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart Quotes

“I remember reading somewhere that there are only two possible prayers: “help me” and “thank you.” “Thank you,” I say to the universe, before I fall asleep.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“no place is how you expect it to be, and the best thing to do is to not want things in the first place.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“They say there's a long, narrow ribbon of space-time that stretches from Mexico to Canada. I hear you can live there, for a little while, as long as you keep moving. But be careful, it will break your heart.  ”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back, into safety. -Abraham Maslow”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Time disappears, and it is just me and the mountain, and the wind. I have always been in this windstorm, I think, as I fight my way forward. And I will always be in this windstorm. Up ahead, on a ridge, is a single tree. Someday, I think, I am going to be reincarnated as that tree. As punishment for every choice I've ever made. Or as a reward.  ”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. -Anais Nin”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“How long before all grief is accounted for and I can begin the tedious process of sorting through the tangled barrels, picking off the useful bits, letting the wind carrying the rest away.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I love you", says the doug-fir. "I love you so much." I can feel the tree there, the tree underneath me the tree all
around me, the tree inside of me. The trees holding each other holding the soil holding me. The trees more patient than
anything, save the ocean. The trees with the long view. I can feel their pity- "Little mammal", they say, "with your two legs.
Running around saying Where Do I Belong. Making value judgments on the wind, the flowers in the springtime, the
shapes of the stars. Little mammal with your trembling heart. I am your home and I love you and I will always be here.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I think about how no place is how you expect it to be, and the best thing to do is to not want things in the first place. But it’s so hard to do that. So hard.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I’ve been eating this shit for so long that I’ve transcended the need to actually enjoy my food. No more desires. Eat to live, not live to eat.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I’ve spent every waking moment nurturing and maintaining my relationship with this eighteen-inch by 2660-mile ribbon of dirt.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Many people in the western world never experience true hunger. I don't mean hungry-for-a-few-hours hunger but scary, bone deep, days-on-end hunger. It's a terrifying, raw ache that is completely outside the experience of almost everyone I know. We live in a world that overflows with cheap, if poisonous, food; it is not uncommon to be chronically ill on account of what you eat, but it is relatively rare to be hungry.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“We’re glued to each other with a special glue that holds feral cats together”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“we let our worries sink down towards the molten center of the earth. We’re slurry with sleep and wonder and we’ve forgotten about linear time.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I am so proud of my friends and their disinclination to give any fucks.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“What do I need to know?” I ask the tree. “You’re doing everything just right,” says the tree.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Stop feeling ridiculous, I think. Forget about your dignity. Nobody cares.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I have always been here and I will always be here. Forever and ever and ever.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I am always sober. It's my lot in life. I don't know why, I can't explain it. At least not in any way that makes sense to other people. Alcohol makes me feel sick. Or, I don't like to be intoxicated.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I could lie down in a sunlit clearing and sleep forever. Let the forest digest me.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I love you, says the doug-fir. I love you so much. I can feel the tree there, the tree underneath me the tree all around me, the tree inside of me. The trees holding each other holding the soil holding me. The trees more patient than anything, save the ocean. The trees with the long view. I can feel their pity- Little mammal, they say, with your two legs. Running around saying Where Do I Belong. Making value judgments on the wind, the flowers in the springtime, the shapes of the stars. Little mammal with your trembling heart. I am your home and I love you and I will always be here.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“It’s just me up here on the mountaintop, between the earth and sky. It’s just me, the sound of my breath as I push myself up to the ridge; it’s just me, beneath the Milky Way. The stars are singing to me, the air that rises from the valleys; all of this is for me. There is a peace inside of me, a feeling of emptiness. Above me the galaxy is spinning, or I’m spinning, or we’re all spinning. There is no time, I think. There has never been any time. There is only this.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“A while later I stop in a stand of big doug-firs and lean my body against one of them. The bars of yellow sun are scattered just so and I push my face into the deep rutted bark of the tree smelling the spider webs there, the dust, the hardened pitch. Big doug-fir, I think. What do I need to know right now. I love you, says the doug-fir. I love you so much. I can feel the tree there, the tree underneath me the tree all around me, the tree inside of me. The trees holding each other holding the soil holding me. The trees more patient than anything, save the ocean. The trees with the long view. I can feel their pity- Little mammal, they say, with your two legs. Running around saying Where Do I Belong. Making value judgments on the wind, the flowers in the springtime, the shapes of the stars. Little mammal with your trembling heart. I am your home and I love you and I will always be here.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“In this moment it is everything, it is the whole universe, spinning away into forever. But still I don't understand it. What is fleeting, and what is mine to keep? Already I feel a great sorrow building inside me, a knowing feeling of loss. How did I get here, and how will I find my bearings once all of this is gone?”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“What a convoluted kaleidoscopic twisted universe we live in. What glory, what heights and depths. I want to hike until I fall apart.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“We're just mammals, living our imperfect lives on this three-legged dog of a planet. We fuck up for a little while, and then we die. But it's beautiful. So beautiful. And not because some organized religion tells you so but because you know it, in your heart. And nothing can ever take that away from you.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“The negative things I used to obsess about are just sort of gone. I seem to have worked through all of them while pounding out miles in the desert, worn them down like worry stones until there was nothing left at all, just sand that slipped through my fingers and away.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“forward”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“What are you doing?” he shouts, waving his free arm in the air. “Trying to get to Canada,” says Instigate. “Why?”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail

“When I climb into my tent I feel happy and light. I’ve gone twenty-nine miles today, my longest day ever. Ever ever.”
― Carrot Quinn, Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: An Adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail