The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances.

The thing that is most beautiful about Antarctica for me is the light. It's like no other light on Earth, because the air is so free of impurities. You get drugged by it, like when you listen to one of your favorite songs. The light there is a mood-enhancing substance.

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

Heaven, for me, is one focused project - it's like a weird form of autism.

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.

When Alex left for Alaska," Franz remembers, "I prayed. I asked God to keep his finger on the shoulder of that one; I told him that boy was special. But he let Alex die. So on December 26, when I learned what happened, I renounced the Lord. I withdrew my church membership and became an atheist. I decided I couldn't believe in a God who would let something that terrible happen to a boy like Alex.

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