The desert sharpened the sweet ache of his longing, amplified it, gave shape to it in sere geology and clean slant of light.

This forms the nub of a dilemna that every Everest climber eventually comes up against: in order to succeed you must be exceedingly driven, but if you're too driven you're likely to die.

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

The sad end he met in Afghanistan was more accurately a function of his stubborn idealism - his insistence on trying to do the right thing. In which case it wasn't a tragic flaw that brought Tillman down, but a tragic virtue.

Early on a difficult climb, especially a solo climb, you’re hyper-aware of the abyss pulling at your back, constantly feeling its call, its immense hunger. To resist takes tremendous conscious effort, you don’t dare let your guard down for an instant. The void puts you on edge, makes your movements tentative and clumsy. But as the climb continues, you grow accustomed to the exposure, you get used to rubbing shoulders with doom, you come to believe in the reliability of your hands and feet and head. You learn to trust your self-control.

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.

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.