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Book: Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains
Quotes of Book: Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among
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  1. Jon Krakauer _ Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among

    Early on a difficult climb, especially a difficult solo climb, you're hyperaware of the abyss pulling at your back. You constantly feel its call, its immense hunger. To resist takes a tremendous conscious effort; you don't dare let your guard down for an instant. The siren song of the void puts you on edge, it makes your movements tentative, clumsy, herky-jerky. Bus as the climb goes on, you grow accustomed to the exposure, you get used to rubbing shoulders with doom, you come to believe in the reliability of your hands and feet and head. You learn to trust your self-control.
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  2. Jon Krakauer _ Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among

    You'll never feel the joy of movement if you're struggling. You've got to get good enough and strong enough to reach the point where you can feel this quintessential lightness. - John Gill
    book-quote

  3. Jon Krakauer _ Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among

    Boredom presents a very real, if insidious peril. To quote Blaine Harden from the Washington post:"Boredom kills, and those it does not kill, it cripples, and those it does not cripple, it bleeds like a leech, leaving its victims pale, insipid, and brooding. Examples abound...Rats kept in comfortable isolation quickly become jumpy, irritable, and aggressive. Their bodies twitch, their tails grow scaly." The backcountry traveler, then, in addition to developing such skills as the use of a map and compass, or the prevention and treatment of blisters, must prepare mentally and materially to cope with boredom, lest his tail grow scaly.
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  4. Jon Krakauer _ Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among

    Continually question climbing pursuits. Do they draw one back to the climbing community? Or do they lead along the {inner-directed} path? This questioning generates a tension that is heightened by disillusionment. Ultimately, one reaches anemptiness, and this is where our basic spontaneous nature leads to the beginning of the path... Thereafter one can continually stand apart from the outer world of climbing, yet at times be fiercely involved in it. Philosophical and mystical dimensions emerge when the two worlds are brought together.
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  5. Jon Krakauer _ Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among

    One of the differences between us was that Marc wanted very badly to climb the Eiger, while I wanted very badly only to have climbed the Eiger. Marc, understand, is at that age when the pituitary secretes an overabundance of those hormones that mask the subtler emotions, such as fear. He tends to confuse things like life-or-death climbing with fun.
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  6. Jon Krakauer _ Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among

    ...books possess an ounce-of-weight to minute-of-entertainment ratio that compares quite favorably to intoxicants.
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  7. Jon Krakauer _ Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among

    Bouldering isn't really a sport. It's a climbing activity with metaphysical, mystical, and philosophical overtones." -John Gill-
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  8. Jon Krakauer _ Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among

    Most climbers aren't in fact deranged, they're just infected with a particularly virulent strain of the Human Condition.
    book-quote
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