I don't like egocentricity, which is something that I have arduously battled in myself my entire life.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.