“You get towards the end of life - no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?”

“Whatever you want, at any moment, someone else is getting it. Whatever you have, someone else is longing for.”

“As long as there's such a thing as time, everybody's damaged in the end, changed into something else. It always happens, sooner or later.”

“In the end, the end of a life only matters to friends, family, and other folks you used to know. For everyone else, it's just another end.”

“My dad always used to say that with everything in life, there’s a game-changing moment. The one moment everything else hinges upon, but you hardly ever know it at the time.”

“I know beginnings, I know endings too,
and life-in-death, and something else
I'd rather not recall just now.”

“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.”

“As with the other difficult moments in my life, those experiences reinforced the fact that I climb for myself and no one else. Sometimes the distinctions get blurred, and it's easy to get sucked into other people's realities. In the end, climbing is what I love, my own expression of joy. Everything else is just noise.”

“I have something to offer, and through which you can realize something, realize the essence of this life. Even if you are a billionaire, you have to have one thing going for you, and that’s life. That is a key ingredient. You don’t have life going for you, you can have everything else going for you, and it won't make any difference.”

“If you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.”