“It matters what myths we tell ourselves -- which ideals we choose to honor.”

“Maybe mountaineering shouldn't be considered heroic at all, since the whole effort is 'useless' and in no way to be compared with sitting down at the wrong lunch counter in the early-sixties South, or going into battle. Nevertheless, situations arise in the useless enterprise of mountaineering that present people with choices, that make emotional and physical demands that few can meet.”

“In many ways we were what Billy and Ruth Graham called 'happily incompatible'.”

“It is one of those rare moments when we seem to forget everything,forget this insistence on living in the moment.”

“Don't go back to teaching - it sucks the marrow from your sould andyour wisdom fades into the brick brains of those who can not learnwhat they do not know. Teaching is a wall falling into a vermilionsea. What I like most about you is your yellow flaring laugh and itlashing joyfully against the wind of your anguish.”

“We must remember that there is a great difference between a myth and a miracle. A myth is the idealization of a fact. A miracle is the counterfeit of a fact. There is the same difference between a myth and a miracle that there is between fiction and falsehood -- between poetry and perjury. Miracles belong to the far past and the far future. The little line of sand, called the present, between the seas, belongs to common sense to the natural.”

“Truth was such a tricky thing when it came to children. When was it good medicine and when was it poison”