“While standing on top of Everest, I looked across the valley, towards the other great peak, Makalu, and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed… it showed me that, even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything for me, by any means. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.”

“No one stands on the top of the world. Not you, not me, not even gods. But the unbearable vacancy of the throne in the sky is over. From now on… I will be sitting on it.”

“I'm not looking back, but I want to look around me now.
-- Time Stand Still (1987)”

“It wasn’t really a chat show, it was a magazine show. I looked at it as a summer job. As long as no one makes me interview a celeb again, I’ll be happy. It wasn’t what I signed up for but, of course, nowadays everyone likes celebs. I’m pretty bored of them, though. I wasn’t interested and couldn’t be bothered to pretend I was.”

“You have a faint education look about you. An educated girl never has an educated look. I cannot stand an educated look on women. It's Communism. Look at me, I passed my University entrance, but I don't show it.”

“I often hear people call climbing a selfish, egocentric pursuit. I consider this idea a lot. On the surface, as a sport or activity, this may be true. But for most soul climbers, climbing has never been merely about athletics. Climbing has shown me how to look beyond myself and my own desires. It has taught me how to be a part of a community, rather than living in a narrow world of my own making. I have learned, painfully, how to accept help from others. I have learned that my powerful emotions can be my greatest strength, as well as my greatest weakness. Physically and intellectually, climbing has tugged me into the larger world, beyond my own culture and comfort zone. Above all, climbing has shown me the existence of forces beyond the seen world. It has taught me to ponder the meaning of reality. It has shown me that I am small.”

“When you're climbing Mount Everest, nothing is easy. You just take one step at a time, never look back and always keep your eyes glued to the top.”

“I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love & duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting & challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it.”

“I think the whole attitude towards climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top. They don't give a damn for anybody else who may be in distress and it doesn't impress me at all that they leave someone lying under a rock to die.”

“As I sit at my desk, I know where I am. I see before me a window; beyond that some trees; beyond that the red roofs of the campus of Stanford University; beyond them the trees and the roof tops which mark the town of Palo Alto; beyond them the bare golden hills of the Hamilton Range… beyond that other mountains, range upon range, until we come to the Rockies; beyond that the Great Plains and the Mississippi; beyond that the Alleghenies; beyond that the eastern seaboard; beyond that the Atlantic Ocean; beyond that is Europe; beyond that is Asia. I know, furthermore, that if I go far enough I will come back to where I am now. In other words, I have a picture of the earth as round. I visualize it as a globe. I am a little hazy on some of the details… I probably could not draw a very good map of Indonesia, but I have a fair idea where everything is located on the face of this globe. Looking further, I visualize the globe as a small speck circling around a bright star which is the sun, in the company of many other similar specks, the planets. Looking still further, I see our star the sun as a member of millions upon millions of others in the Galaxy. Looking still further, I visualize the Galaxy as one of millions upon millions of others in the universe.”