Believe in the integrity and value of the jagged path. We don't always do the right thing on our way to rightness.

The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods.

Work hard. Do good. Be incredible!

You get to define the terms of your life.

Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding

I made it the mantra of those days; when I paused before yet another series of switchbacks or skidded down knee-jarring slopes, when patches of flesh peeled off my feet along with my socks, when I lay alone and lonely in my tent at night I asked, often out loud: Who is tougher than me? The answer was always the same, and even when I knew absolutely there was no way on this earth that it was true, I said it anyway: No one.

Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.