Getting to the top of any given mountain was considered much less important than how one got there: prestige was earned by tackling the most unforgiving routes with minimal equipment, in the boldest style imaginable.

I'm intrigued by fanatics - people who are seduced by the promise, or the illusion, of the absolute.

I think I understand that religious faith which makes the holy brave and strong; my strength is just somewhere else--it's in myself...I do not fear what may await me, though I'm equally confident that nothing awaits.

weeping...betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure.

Getting to the top of any given mountain was considered much less important than how one got there: prestige was earned by tackling the most unforgiving routes with minimal equipment, in the boldest style imaginable.

If you don't take it, I'm going to throw it away," Alex cheerfully retorted. "I don't want to know what time it is. I don't want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that matters.

At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence.