"We can't fail if we never give it an honest try, or whatever Yoda didn't say." — Aidan Multhauf Alpinist Magazine, Issue 87, "Twenty Classic Climbs in Twenty Days"
"He was an artist and life was his medium." — Derek Franz Alpinist Magazine, Issue 87, "Fabulous Roman Candles"
"Because nature is not a place to visit. Nature is who we are." — Ada Limón You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World
"When you talk about rules, you can sound like a fuddy-duddy, but Rules are actually very creative. They are not just for rule-followers. In fact, often as soon as I make a Rule, I realize I will eventually have to—will want to— break it. It’s only a matter of time. Rules are the structure that enable us to go a little wild on a regular basis. Preferably every day." — Katie Arnold The Rules, Work in Process
"The night gradually faded and dawn turned to morning, the great peaks reassembling themselves on both sides of the valley, forming a massive corridor." — Jeff Lowe Khumbu Possibilities: Survival at the Limits of the Known, Summit Journal, Issue 321
"I really try to see [each spot I visit] with new eyes, because I don't want to become complacent just because I've lived here for so long. I want to see everything new all the time. [I want] to be always open and aware of my environment and the new things that it's telling me, or the old things that it's reminding me of." — Alexandra de Steiguer HumaNature Podcast Episode 124: The Woman of Star Island
"Fear lives in a past experience or in a future assumption of what might happen." — Kimmy Fasani Outside Podcast: What Snowboarding Has to do With Parenthood, Loss, and Cancer
"I didn't need to "get away", I needed to get "to", to simplicity. I wanted to be lean and hard and sunbrowned and kind. Instead I felt fat and soft and white and mean." — Audrey Suthernland via Stephen Casimiro "Lean and Hard and Sunbrowned and Kind", Adventure Journal
"The air is thinner, clearer, the views longer. You can see every which way, in all directions—bowls and cirques, high ridges, mountains beyond mountains. You are in the air, almost flying. The climb has been taxing, but here at the edge of the sky, the mountain gives you all its energy, fills you with a kind of exhilaration you rarely feel down low, in the trees. Here you are closer to the sky. You are sky." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"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
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." — JRR Tolkein via Gandalf The Lord of the Rings
"Our stories are built from bits and pieces, broken fragments we string together, determined by chance and choice, accident and intent—sudden bursts of understanding that illuminate the truth of who we are." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"All ways. Always." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"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
"I marvel at how quickly unfamiliar experiences transform into mundane reality." — 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
"Relentlessly pursuing happiness can subconsciously reinforce discontent because the story we’re telling ourselves is that we aren’t happy." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"It’s strange how we miss things the most just as they’re about to end." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"I am and always will be the optimist. The hoper of far-flung hopes and the dreamer of improbable dreams." — 11th Doctor Doctor Who, "The Almost People"
