Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon.

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.

Its not always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong.

It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty.

THE LONG WALK is a raw, wrenching, blood-soaked chronicle of the human cost of war. Brian Castner, the leader of a military bomb disposal team, recounts his deployment to Iraq with unflinching candor, and in the process exposes crucial truths not only about this particular conflict, but also about war throughout history. Castner's memoir brings to mind Erich Maria Remarque's masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front.

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

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