"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"
"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
"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
"Adventure. The word is ad-venture, to venture toward. No big declarations of peril, challenge, daring, conquest. No guarantee of making it. Just trying toward." — Audrey Sutherland Paddling North
"Resilience doesn't come from comfort. And so I'm not wishing you a life free of discomfort. I'm wishing you a life where you can handle the discomforts that are inevitably going to come. And I think about that's what my journey in the mountains so much has taught me is not how to prevent all of the things that don't feel good, but how to lean into the ones that are there to teach us." — Melissa Arnot Reid Outside Podcast, "Climbing Everest is Easy Compared to Surviving an Abusive Parent"
"If we stay in the story too long, it becomes a cage." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"I know how seductive holding on to suffering can be because I’ve done it. In many ways it feels safe. I know how powerful the identity of brokenness can be and I have many versions of this story." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"In Zen, not knowing is considered a form of wisdom. Being willing to accept uncertainty brings you closer to the truth of life. When you no longer hold fast to fixed ideas or outcomes, to what you want to happen, you see more clearly what is happening." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"I have to believe in complete healing. I have to surround myself with people who believe it, too. I have to see it and feel it and live it. I have to train my mind to heal my body...This is how it works: my mind transporting me back to a time when I was healthy, and, at the same time, ahead to when I will be again...I dream about walking. The setting and characters change, but the plot is always the same: I’m injured and on crutches and then, without thinking, I take one free step and then another...I no longer refer to my left leg as my broken leg: it’s my healing leg...Recovery isn’t something that will happen. It is happening...Healing isn’t a mysterious, passive process that’s happening to me, but one that I am creating." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"Sitting taught me how to pay attention without creating stories around what I saw...Everything is Zen when you see it clearly for what it is, rather than what you want it to be." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"Anything we do for a long time can become stale if we’re not careful. Suddenly there are conditions, demands, desires for recognition, success, profit, improvement. In Zen, this is called “gaining idea,” and it’s antithetical to zazen. “Our way to sit is not to acquire something; it is to express our true nature,” Suzuki Roshi wrote. “That is our practice.”" — 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
"We each have our own true way. We can imitate or be inspired, but we can only really ever be ourselves." — 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
"All ways. Always." — 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
"Imagining a feeling of happiness, especially during meditation, starts to shape our lives toward it despite no external factors changing at all." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"Trying to find happiness in “having” or in someone else’s version of it is like chasing the horizon: you might end up where you were looking, but you’ll never recognize it because your eyes are still fixed outward." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb." — Najwa Zebian
"Hard as it might be to accept, trying to fix someone is deeply narcissistic behavior." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
