If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person?

'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.

That's what courage is. Taking your disappointments and your failures, your guilt and your shame, all the wounds received and inflicted, and sinking them in the past. Starting again. Damning yesterday and facing tomorrow with your head held high. Times change. It's those that see it coming, and plan for it, and change themselves to suit, that prosper.

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

A friendship between a man and a woman was what you called it when one had been pursuing the other for a long time and never gotten anywhere.

A whole new thing. A forging of the humble parts of bread and cheese into a greater whole. I call it...a cheese-trap.

Things aren't what they used to be' is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things used to be better, they invariably mean they were better for them, because they were young, and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave.