The man coming back from the hard mountain trip is a wiser being, calmer and radiating inside. I'd say momentary liberated.

Naturally, the top does not automatically make us better. Like the samurai frequented ordinary cutthroat, so sometimes extreme mountaineer can be self-centered, mythomaniac or crook to each yourself and the environment.

I like to describe Himalayan climbing as a kind of art of suffering. Just pushing, pushing yourself to your limits.

The most significant dimension of freedom is the freedom from one's own ego - in other words, from the feeling that I am the center of everything

Great effort, fear and suffering sweet all the worthless chaff out of us.

Difficult struggle in mountaineering is our rise above himself, is the voice of freedom.

Classic mountaineering grows out of a traditional romantic imagination. Its heart is the feeling, its path is blood, sweat and tears, and its restriction is God.