Every time I go out and do something, Hans panics and starts trying to beat me. He's like a dog humping your leg.

Each time I saw a cliff, I wondered whether I could free solo it. My life shaped itself around the understanding that falling means I die. To break the paradigm I had to empty out my essence, rummaging for fundamentals I thought were gone forever.

I have a strong feeling for it, and I think us as humans perceive all of that - the pressure change and the moon and the wind and whether a storm is moving in on us - if we just are close enough to nature.

I just love any place that I can sit in the sun and feel the warmth of the sun's rays, and feel the connection to the planet, really tapping into how small I am and really how insignificant I am in comparison to the universe.

It's one of the most fundamental desires of man, of being free and flying unhindered, and it really seems to go a lot with our founding fathers' principles of freedom.

Every time I go out and do something, Hans panics and starts trying to beat me. He's like a dog humping your leg.

A lot of people confuse free climbing with free solo. Free climbing is when we use ropes, but we only make upward progress with our bodies.