141 Quotes by David Grann

Passion for something can easily tip into obsession, which is a dangerous thing, especially when those affected are they very people who so loyally stand and wait. -Henry Worsley

During Xtha-cka Zhi-ga The-the, the Killer of Flowers Moon. I will wade across the river of the blackfish, the otter, the beaver. I will climb the bank where the willow never dies.

Tom’s sergeant was shot six times by an assailant, while a bystander was struck twice. As the sergeant lay on the ground, bleeding, he asked for a slip of paper and scribbled on it a message for Ranger headquarters: “I am shot all to pieces. Everything quiet.” Somehow, he survived his wounds, but the innocent bystander died.

Does God think that, because it is raining, I am not going to destroy the world? - Lope de Aguirre after going mad in the Amazon

An Indian Affairs agent said, 'The question will suggest itself, which of these people are the savages?

You know, I had a lot of romantic notions about the jungle and this kind of finished that

Loneliness is not intolerable when enthusiasm for a quest fills the mind.

Years later, another member [of the Royal Geographical Society] conceded, "Explorers are not, perhaps, the most promising people with whom to build a society. Indeed, some might say that explorers become explorers precisely because they have a streak of unsociability and a need to remove themselves at regular intervals as far as possible from their fellow men.

The Osage elders sang the traditional songs for the dead, only now the songs seemed for the living, for those who had to endure this world of killing.