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

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.

If you don't take it, I'm going to throw it away," Alex cheerfully retorted. "I don't want to know what time it is. I don't want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that matters.

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

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

I'm intrigued by fanatics - people who are seduced by the promise, or the illusion, of the absolute.

Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their loves. The bush is an unforgiving place, however, that care nothing for hope or longing.