“when a daoist has finished his cultivation, he will be a roaming deity or a wandering immortal. there are mountains and waters in the heavens just as here, and he will stay on one such mountain”

“one must submit, like a traveller who has to ascend a mountain: if the mountain was not there, the road would be both shorter and pleasanter; but there it is, and he must get over it.”

“The famous Zen parable about the master for whom, before his studies, mountains were only mountains, but during his studies mountains were no longer mountains, and afterward mountains were again mountains could be interpreted as an allegory about [the perpetual paradox that when one is closest to a destination one is also the farthest).”

“Every hill becomes a mountain when one has to climb up it.”

“He had reached his goal. He had climbed the unclimbable mountain”

“That's you, drops of water and you're on top of the mountain of success. But one day you start sliding down the mountain and you think wait a minute; I'm a mountain top water drop. I don't belong in this valley, this river, this low dark ocean with all these drops of water. Then one day it gets hot and you slowly evaporate into air, way up, higher than any mountain top, all the way to the heavens. Then you understand that it was at your lowest that you were closest to God. Life's a journey that goes round and round and the end is closest to the beginning. So if it's change you need, relish the journey.”