Almost every magazine piece I've ever written, I felt like I haven't done it justice, like it was just a gloss.

Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence — the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes — all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand.

In climbing, having confidence in your partners is no small concern. One climber's actions can affect the welfare of the entire team.

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

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.

Above the comforts of Base Camp, the expedition in fact became an almost Calvinistic undertaking. The ratio of misery to pleasure was greater by an order of magnitude than any mountain I'd been on; I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking above all else, something like a state of grace.

The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything.