“As far as I was concerned men were something you had around the place, not particularly interesting, but quite harmless. I had never shown the slightest feeling for them, and apart from my never wearing a skirt, saw nothing else in common between us.”

“Now if I was aping men, she'd have every right to be disgusted. As far as I was concerned, men were something you had around the place...not particularly interesting, but quite harmless.”

“We're cool," I say calmly, although I feel something else. I feel... sad. Like I've lost something I never quite had.”

“I felt as though I were plunging into something new and quite abnormal. I had the strangest and most vivid impressions, such as I had never before known in the mountains. There was something unnatural in the way I saw Lachenal and everything around us. I smiled to myself at the paltriness of our efforts, for I could stand apart and watch myself making these efforts. But all sense of exertion was gone, as though there were no longer any gravity. This diaphanous landscape, this quintessence of purity--these were not the mountains I knew: they were the mountains of my dreams (pp.206-207).”

“Besides, when I look around me at the men, I feel that God never meant us women to be too particular.”

“I had the feeling that some horrible image was just beyond the field of vision, moving, as I turned my head, so that I never quite saw it.”