Brian

“This forms the nub of a dilemna that every Everest climber eventually comes up against: in order to succeed you must be exceedingly driven, but if you're too driven you're likely to die.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster

“Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.”
― J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“Above the comforts of Base Camp, the expedition in fact became an almost Calvinistic undertaking. The ratio of misery to pleasure was greater by an order of magnitude than any mountain I'd been on; I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking above all else, something like a state of grace.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster