Ed Viesturs · 342 pages
Rating: (4K votes)
“K2 is not some malevolent being, lurking there above the Baltoro, waiting to get us. It's just there. It's indifferent. It's an inanimate mountain made of rock, ice, and snow. The "savageness" is what we project onto it, as if we blame the peak for our own misadventures on it.”
― Ed Viesturs, quote from K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain
“That’s leadership: lead by example, lead from the front, inspire people to follow your lead.”
― Ed Viesturs, quote from K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain
“Any “story” can be told in dozens of different ways. For that very reason, I believe, every time you go back and reexamine an important chapter in your life, you learn something new about it.”
― Ed Viesturs, quote from K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain
“There’s an old and honored tradition in exploration literature that you don’t air your dirty laundry in print. Whatever bickering, name-calling, grudge nursing, and dark funks really took place on the expedition, they’re nobody else’s business.”
― Ed Viesturs, quote from K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain
“By now, a significant portion of the whole Sherpa economy depends on the spring and fall seasons on Everest.”
― Ed Viesturs, quote from K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain
“It reminds me of a very wise saying about mountaineering that my wife, Paula, repeats often: “Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, you don’t.”
― Ed Viesturs, quote from K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain
“Morally, however, we had had absolutely no choice but to abort our summit try to help Thor and Chantal get down the mountain. That’s why I find it so hard to stomach all the accounts in recent years—especially on Everest—of climbers ignoring others in trouble for fear a rescue effort would sabotage their own summit bids.”
― Ed Viesturs, quote from K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain
“After two hours of the hardest”
― Ed Viesturs, quote from K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain
“the men placed willow wands every 50 feet or so to mark their route—as I did in 1992, but as no one bothered to in 1986 or 2008, an oversight that contributed to both tragedies.”
― Ed Viesturs, quote from K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain
“Mountaineering will never be a safe activity and would not be worth doing if it were.”
― Ed Viesturs, quote from K2: Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain
“It is impossible to bring more into your life if you are feeling ungrateful about what you have. Why? Because the thoughts and feelings you emit as you feel ungrateful are all negative emotions. ”
― Rhonda Byrne, quote from The Secret
“[H]istory viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion
“So, there was this beautiful princess.
She was locked in a high tower, one whose smart walls had cleaver holes in them that could give her anything: food, a clique of fantastic friends, wonderful clothes. And, best of all, there was this mirror on the wall, so that the princess could look at her beautiful self all day long.
The only problem with the tower was that there way no way out. The builders had forgotten to put in an elevator, or even a set of stairs. She was stuck up there.
One day, the princess realized that she was bored. The view from the tower--gentle hills, fields of white flowers, and a deep, dark forest--fascinated her. She started spending more time looking out the window than at her own reflection, as is often the case with troublesome girls.
And it was pretty clear that no prince was showing up, or at least that he was really late.
So the only thing was to jump.
The hole in the wall gave her a lovely parasol to catch her when she fell, and a wonderful new dress to wear in the fields and forest, and a brass key to make sure she could get back into the tower if she needed to. But the princess, laughing pridefully, tossed the key into the fireplace, convinced she would never need to return to the tower. Without another glance in the mirror, she strolled out onto the balcony and stepped off into midair.
The thing was, it was a long way down, a lot farther than the princess had expected, and the parasol turned out to be total crap. As she fell, the princess realized she should have asked for a bungee jacket or a parachute or something better than a parasol, you know?
She struck the ground hard, and lay there in a crumpled heap, smarting and confused, wondering how things had worked out this way. There was no prince around to pick her up, her new dress was ruined, and thanks to her pride, she had no way back into the tower.
And the worst thing was, there were no mirrors out there in the wild, so the princess was left wondering whether she in fact was still beautiful . . . or if the fall had changed the story completely.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Pretties
“When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?”
― Nicole Krauss, quote from The History of Love
“If he was winter, I was summer. If I was sunshine, he was night. A dark and stormy one.”
― Karen Marie Moning, quote from Darkfever
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