My reasoning, if one can call it that, was inflamed by the scatter shot passions of youth and a literary diet overly rich in the works of Nietzshe, Kerouac, and John Menlove Edwards.

Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.

Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long timeand it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience.My point is that you do not need me or anyone elseThe only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness

When a young person is moved by a passion and feels compelled to go on this sort of quest, I think you have to let him. You can't stop him. In our culture we don't have formal rights of passage like in some ancient cultures. Subjecting yourself to risk... may be something you have to go through to be a man or a woman.

Most climbers aren't in fact deranged, they're just infected with a particularly virulent strain of the Human Condition.

<...> though he found that if you are stupid enough to bury a camera underground you won't be taking many pictures with it afterwards. Thus the story has no picture book for the period May 10, 1991 - January 7, 1992. But this is not important. It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God it's great to be alive! Thank you. Thank you.

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.