The mountains are exceptional places for, as the natural environment is concerned, they are the concentration of the wildest possible variety of all natural phenomena and forms. They are somehow a concentration of the truth of nature or even I'd say its essence.

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.

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

Whenever a climber leaves the known paths, he enters an area without rules or routines... The only advice comes from deep inside the self.

Other extremely alluring traits in people are simplicity and naturalness. Simplicity and naturalness are never painfully obvious qualities, and yet which I come across them in a person, I get this sense of a firm foundation and of a direct access to truth.

Every type of evil we've got in us is the result of that one true illness of the human mind - that is, of being self-centered.

If there is such a thing as spiritual materialism, it is displayed in the urge to possess the mountains rather than to unravel and accept their mysteries.