Near the foot of the mountain we visited a yogi who dwelled in a hollow tunneled beneath a boulder. He pondered our notion of climbing Shivling and said: 'First travel, then struggle, finally calm'.

Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.

The mountain is nothing without people on it. Often you part expedition exasperated, but a year or two later you go back with the same partners knowing there's potential in this human relationship.

If we ever have children and they become climbers I'll tell them, Stay away from expeditions. They'll make you poor and neurotic.

Maybe Himalayan climbing is just a bad habit, like smoking, of which one says with cavalier abandon, must give this up some day, before it kills me.

The mountains are beautiful but they are not worth dying for.

Being tough today might cause you to be weak in the future.

They are nothing but a broken bones crawling in the shadow of the past.

They’d stolen his life.And rebirthed him as a monster.

You want me at your mercy, Princess. Question is, why?”“No, ” she whispered. “Question is, do I?

Liberals are more upset when a tree is chopped down than when a child is aborted.

I promise you, I will never enter a bicycle race.

Youth, with swift feet, walks onward in the way; the land of joy lies all before his eyes.

But most hearts say, I want, I want, I want, I want. My heart is more duplicitous, though no twin as I once thought. It says, I want, I don't want, I want, and then a pause. It forces me to listen.

The sky was clear - remarkably clear - and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.

I think if you're fame-hungry, go out to a nightclub and get drunk... why do that? I don't understand how some people would want fame so bad that they'd go out and get negative attention to earn it.