"It would be so much easier to stay home now, but then I wouldn’t find out what happens next." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"“So where’s your motor?” I answer without thinking, “In the river beneath my feet.” ... Beneath my shoes was solid ground, but the mountains are fluid, alive. They have a flow, an energy older and wiser that can carry me...I’d felt it with my whole being on Hope Pass, my legs absorbing energy from the earth, my torso bending to the slope of the hill, the slope showing me how to run on water beneath my feet, my body flowing uphill the whole way. The energy wasn’t mine, it was bigger than me. It was all around, limitless." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"'Your body is ready. Your body knows what do. Trust that and get out of your own way.'" — Natalie via Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"The first rule of rivers is the first rule of Zen. Don’t fight the current. Go with it, not against it." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. / Just keep going. No feeling is final." — Rainer Maria Rilke Go to the Limits of your Longing
"The words that really matter in the wake of passing are the stories we tell of our loved ones. Stories fill up the space they leave behind and we can see their faces and hear their laugh and reach into something shapeless and touch them. So long as we tell stories, they can never really die." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"Grief can be an astonishingly beautiful response to loss and the pain of it can stir a renewed appreciation for life. It makes food taste better and feelings feel deeper and colors brighter. It amplifies love. Loss can imbue us with such profound gratitude for what we have, and I will always marvel that the void of death can be what makes us feel most alive." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"Every climb feels impossible until you stand on top." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"'Asking for help isn’t giving up,' said the horse. 'It’s refusing to give up.'" — Charlie Mackesy The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
"Life isn’t a cognitive exercise. It’s an action sport. Understanding isn’t enough. You have to go out and do the damn thing." — Psychedelic therapist Lauren Taus via Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"Getting a permit to float the Middle Fork without a guide, as our friends did, isn’t like winning the lottery. It is winning the lottery." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"It’s strange how we miss things the most just as they’re about to end." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"Dreams have a funny way of becoming reality when you put yourself in the position for them to happen." — Katie Lambert Alpinist Magazine, Issue 66, "Magic Line"
"If you set out with purpose to do something amazing, you invariably find that circumstance will lend a hand." — Andy Kirkpatrick Kirkpatrick's Climbing Notes, "Hard Things Easy"
"To the oldest part of our brain, the experience of climbing is interpreted as an act of survival and survival is stressful work...We fight with our conscious and subconscious minds alike and the whole game is learning to manage the stress response and ultimately work in tandem with our brain and body in pursuit of a goal. In that way, it becomes an act of mindfulness because in order to survive, we’re forced to distill order from chaos and focus on the now. The discomfort of it all is offset by the highs that come with it. It’s beautiful and breathtaking and life-affirming in a way that few other sports can ever be." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"I secure a short length of rope in a coil over my neck and look up the slope until the light fades into a black question mark." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"Words amidst tragedy rarely if ever touch the void of grief, let alone fill it. The need to speak is an attempt to bring something back...to undo something that can’t be undone. And platitudes aren’t all that comforting. Regardless, someone always says something like “At least they died doing what they loved.” The search for a silver lining, the stumbling to make sense of death, doesn’t make loss any less painful...Say what you can and mean what you say and when there are no more words just let the silence speak. For a moment, let the silence scream." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"It’s not about a list. It’s about the experiences. The list just gets you out there." — Brendon Leonard Semi-Rad, "The Point Of Doing Pointless Things With Your Friends"
"Let us not throw up our hands when it’s time to roll up our sleeves." — Vice President Kamala Harris Speech, January 6, 2024
"Was I the person, the climber, that I believed I had been? Those events shaped who I was, and now they were receding into the distance." — Chris Jones Climbing Fitz Roy, 1968
