I'm going to paraphrase Thoreau here... rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth.

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

The endless, agonizing recycling of what might have been, soon followed by a litany of rationalizations and self-deceptions as you struggle to reconcile the void between the person you want to be and the person you fear you are.

Some people feel like they don't deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.

I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.

THE LONG WALK is a raw, wrenching, blood-soaked chronicle of the human cost of war. Brian Castner, the leader of a military bomb disposal team, recounts his deployment to Iraq with unflinching candor, and in the process exposes crucial truths not only about this particular conflict, but also about war throughout history. Castner's memoir brings to mind Erich Maria Remarque's masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front.

It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it.