If you're bumming out, you're not gonna get to the top, so as long as we're up here we might as well make a point of grooving. (Quoting Scott Fischer)

As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane-as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout-there may be no more potent force than religion.

Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics and others with a shaky hold on reality.

Heaven, for me, is one focused project - it's like a weird form of autism.

Military investigations are designed not to find anyone guilty.

Some people feel like they don't deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.

According to the moral absolutism that characterizes McCandless's beliefs, a challenge in which a successful outcome is assured isn't a challenge at all.