Children can be harsh judges when it comes to their parents, disinclined to grant clemency.

<...> 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.

The core of mans' spirit comes from new experiences.

...books possess an ounce-of-weight to minute-of-entertainment ratio that compares quite favorably to intoxicants.

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

HAPPINESS is ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED

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.