When you are totally defeated you begin again to enjoy the small things around you. Just going to the mountains, not for victory or glory, but to enjoy nature or enjoy fine people. If you always succeed you enjoy the admiration of many people. Being defeated means being limited to the basis existential choices of life. If you can enjoy the quiet evening hours it is beautiful; a hero who always succeeds may not have time to enjoy such things.

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.

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

Beauty is the door to another world.

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.

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

Isn't a person who can live on nothing much stronger? I try to nurture that transformation in myself.