You can’t coach desire, and no matter how fancy your training plan or how high your stated goals are, it comes down to getting out the door and doing the work day after day.

Within alpinism's narrow framework we seek transcendence and relentlessly pursue what remains hidden from us on flat ground: our true selves.

The depth of any story is proportionate to the protagonist's commitment to their goal, the complexity of the problem, and the grace of the solution.

In the mountains, fatigue is the biggest controllable limitation that will come between you and success.

Climbers are a universal tribe: we share the knowledge that things are not important. Experience is important. Feeling is important.

You will never exploit your full technical capacity if your fitness remains a weak link.

The simpler we make things, the richer the experiences become.

The descent is often as much (or more of) a challenge as the climb.

On big routes in big mountains, speed equals safety.

Many would argue that alpinism is art, not sport.

We climbers have much to learn from the training done in conventional sports.

I am aware of being in a beautiful prison, from which I can only escape by writing.

People are laughing at me today for having holes in my pockets, and ink blood on my fingers- a thirty-something old writer, who strangles words from dictionaries, and feeds on the decay of poetry.

I’m sorry for blaming you for everything I just couldn’t do, and I’ve hurt myself by hurting you.

My anger was on a rise, when suddenly her eyelids fell. Her lips flexed and again relaxed to shower me with a smile that calmed me down in seconds.

Each country thinks its school is in a specific crisis, without ever linking the school's crisis to that of the society around it.

Nine times out of ten it is the coarse word that condemns an evil, and the refined word that excuses it.

And there I was, pretty as heck, brown eyes, a few freckles, fashion challenged, and a bad attitude. Max II.

I'm pretty athletic. I do things sometimes even I can't believe.

We are all human beings, part of the human race, and we need to be compassionate and giving and kind with one another.

I was afraid of small spaces and I was afraid of the tree outside my window, and I had all these phobias. I think many kids have those phobias, but I probably had more than most.