"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
"There are a few vestiges of my high school years who I paid visits to here and there throughout college, or bump into now and again on social media. It’s a part of my life I no longer identify with. Somewhere that, if I ever did return to, I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable in my skin. It’s not that I’m ashamed, or that I don’t cherish the memories, it’s something else. What, I don’t know. For reasons I can’t dimly begin to understand, those disaffected years when I was skating are some of the most nostalgic in my life. They bear no more proximity to my current values and lifestyle...But I don’t want to ruin it by trying to understand it." — Chris Kalman Newsletter
"What’s the point of being grown up if you can’t be childish sometimes?" — 4th Doctor Doctor Who, "Robot"
"When you’re a kid, they tell you it’s all… Grow up, get a job, get married, get a house, have a kid, and that’s it. But the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. It’s so much darker. And so much madder. And so much better." — Elton Pope Doctor Who, "Love and Monsters"
"[Age] is in your head. It’s whatever you believe. You know, my parents were old when they were in their 40s; that’s the way they thought. The way they acted. It was their assumptions about life. I’m not like that; I think you can talk yourself into anything. Age is just a number, as long as your body is willing. Age is meaningless." — Dierdre Wolownick (Alex Honnold's mom) Adventure Journal
"The trick is to die young as late as possible." — Wolf Bauer via Lowell Skoog Written in the Snows
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." — Dumbledore Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
"The carefree timelessness of my youth was rattled in my twenties. A kind of panic set in. Time became visible. Each choice I made began to feel more and more final, as if every choice was the death of all the others. Millions of doors were locking behind me as I passed them in the hallway. I felt that age thirty – adulthood – was coming like winter. Am I missing out? Am I making the right decisions? Am I becoming the person I want to be? It often dawns too late that we have only one life, only one path, and the choices we make become the story line of our lives." — Jedidiah Jenkins To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
"If you cultivate your ability to create Adventure, wherever you are, you will feel alive." — Paul Ramer Backcountry Magazine, Issue 2, "Where's the Adventure?"
"Maybe it’s the sun’s first light on these ancient cliffs, or the heavy current of the river, the feeling that this place exists outside of human time. But here, I start to feel like myself again." — Hilary Oliver She Explores, Episode 3, "Being Here: How the Outdoors Make Us Feel"
"We’re all aging—what can we do with that? How can we look at it differently? How can we take care of ourselves, push ourselves, or just constantly work on getting to know ourselves better?" — Hilaree Nelson
"We are shaped and fashioned by what we love." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Through my twenties I was potting little plants all over. Some I was watering more than others; some I was harvesting from more than others. But by my thirties I could see which plants were still alive and flourishing." — Unknown heard on a podcast
"This present moment / that lives on / to become / long ago." — Gary Snyder This Present Moment, “Go Now”
"This is what our life is like; full of joy, full of sadness, full of longing, full of success, and of bitter disappointments. So full of happiness and suffering at the same time, that sometimes there is just too much of everything. It is then that we grow old." — Nejc Zaplotnik, translated by Mimi Marinsek Alpinist Magazine, Issue 74, "Nejc Zaplotnik, Mountain Poet"
"...how quickly our moment together had already become a memory." — James Campbell Braving It: A Father, a Daughter, and an Unforgettable Journey into the Alaskan Wild
"I believe that fear is the most powerful and detrimental emotion in life and the biggest culprit keeping us from our dreams...Fear can keep you alive, but it can also keep you from living." — Jeremy Jones The Art of Shralpinism
"There's usually a great outcome if you train your mind to look for one." — Jeremy Jones The Art of Shralpinism
"What surprises me most is 'Man,' because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices his money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he doesn't enjoy the present; the result being he doesn't live in the present or the future; he lives as if he's never going to die, and then he dies having never really lived." — The Dalai Lama
