If I know I make this much trouble, I never climb Everest.

To travel, to experience and learn: that is to live.

I needed to go . . . the pull of Everest was stronger for me than any force on earth.

It has been a long road. From a mountain coolie, a bearer of loads, to a wearer of a coat with rows of medals who is carried about in planes and worries about income tax.

I have climbed my mountain, but I must still live my life.

If it is a shame to be the second man on Mount Everest, then I will have to live with this shame.

I hope my twin brother will look exactly like me but more sporty.

Though my father was a sirdar, he always carried loads. It is hard for someone who is walking unburdened to generate in others an enthusiasm for work.

Nothing can stop a lie whose fashion has come...

. . . she tried to weave the strength of her father and the young beauty of her first love with David, the happy oblivion of her teens and her warm protected childhood into a magic cloak.

You don't choose to choose what you choose in life!

The sound of the blades on the ice in the morning is like smelling fresh coffee.

If we lose wilderness, we lose forever the knowledge of what the world was.

In the big leagues everyone has ability. It always comes down to mind games. Who ever is more mentally strong-wins.

...and I have this stupid little thought that Aaron didn't survive the croc attack after all, that he died but he's so pissed off at me that dying didn't stop him from coming here to kill me anyway.

It's like reading a book about a life that you will never occupy, but that's the beauty of being transported.

The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things... It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.

What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I'm almost ready to begin something really new?