“It was titillating to brush up against the enigma of mortality, to steal a glimpse across its forbidden frontier. Climbing was a magnificient activity, I firmly believed, not in spite of the inherent perils, but precisely because of them.”

“Like climbing a cliff, thinking is a perilous activity for those unused to it.”

“I have learned a great truth of life. We do not succeed in spite of our challenges anddifficulties, but rather, precisely because of them.”

“At that stage of my youth, death remained as abstract a concept as non-Euclidean geometry or marriage. I didn't yet appreciate its terrible finality or the havoc it could wreak on those who'd entrusted the deceased with their hearts. I was stirred by the dark mystery of mortality. I couldn't resist stealing up to the edge of doom and peering over the brink. The hint of what was concealed in those shadows terrified me, but I caught sight of something in the glimpse, some forbidden and elemental riddle that was no less compelling than the sweet, hidden petals of a woman's sex.In my case - and, I believe, in the case of Chris McCandless - that was a very different thing from wanting to die.”

“...but now that I view the scene in retrospect I see it as a very gentle and firm deportation, taking me from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady.”

“There is something inherently manly about climbing a mountain. Though, taken literally, that would make a deep sea dive the most feminine activity on the planet.”