'The Blade Itself' was my first book. Probably I should've tried a few short stories first, but for some reason I decided to begin with Everest.

You have to learn to love the small things in life, like a hot bath. You have to love the small things, when you have nothing else

I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn to stop making them.

It is easy to forget how much you have, when your eyes are always fixed on what you have not.

Travel brings wisdom only to the wise. It renders the ignorant more ignorant than ever.

Get what you can with words, because words are free, but the words of an armed man ring that much sweeter.

You should laugh every moment you live, for you'll find it decidedly difficult afterwards.

Proof is boring. Proof is tiresome. Proof is an irrelevance. People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.

Armour... is part of a state of mind... in which you admit the possibility... of being hit.

If life has taught me one thing, it's that there are no villains. Only people, doing their best.

I've made peace with myself. Good for you. That's the hardest war of all to win. Didn't say I won. Just stopped fighting.

One day this war will end. And when it does, Tule Lake will be just a memory.

Running is a big question mark that's there each and every day. It asks you, 'Are you going to be a wimp or are you going to be strong today?

How can the truth make anything worse?

Live light. Offload internal and external baggage for peace within and peace without.

If war is ever lawful, then peace is sometimes sinful.

Russian literature saved my soul. When I was a young girl in school and I asked what is good and what is evil, no one in that corrupt system could show me.

An excess of hoarded wealth is the death of many.

Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.

To the extent that animals continue to die needlessly, we are morally bound to speak.

In you, humanity is precarious; and so, in dread and in shame, you kill the animal in you. And its slaughter poisons you.