Jeff Lowe

I hate big shots of adrenaline. It means you don't have enough margin.

A friend once told me that I was always so manipulative, 'a silver-tongued devil,' as he put it. I was never aware of it.

I used to think that my business mirrored my climbing - if I wasn't failing at something, I just wasn't trying anything hard enough.

Mom would pack our lunch and send us off with no supervision. There were enough of us so that if she lost a few, there would still be plenty left.

It went way beyond just sex with Catherine. It was more like recognizing a time of shared destiny of our souls. We were both born to climb, and we each glimpsed the possibility of the perfect partner in the other.

Hunters get lost all the time. There's just an outcry against climbers because a lot of people don't understand climbers and they think they're crazy.

Climbing is a cross between an athletic or sporting endeavor and the spiritual. I hope it remains that way.

I can see the time coming when I won't need to be out there in the upper pyramid of climbing, but the things you gain from a lifetime of climbing are worth communicating.

Climbing is wildly diverse, ranging from the rock-climbing wall at the local health club to the cutting edge of major Himalayan Alpine ascents.

For me, one of the attractions simply is the variety of interests that climbing serves. In the Himalayas, it's the traveling, the different cultures you experience, the friends you make around the world. On the wall in the gym, it's the feeling of fitness, it's more exciting than pumping iron and motivates you to keep working out.

I may have had some symptoms as early as 1998 - dizziness, vision problems, balance. Anyway, it's been a progression, it hasn't stopped since I first noticed it. Each year there is a considerable decline.

I will still probably die of aspiration-caused pneumonia. I can go along breathing well, then I might aspirate on something, develop pneumonia and be gone in a week.

I'm not a big adrenaline junkie.

Sometimes I spent more time planning a climb than doing it.

We as mountaineers have had a leading role in the destruction of the mountain wilderness environment that we practice our sport in.

Wall climbing is an offshoot of the more traditional sport of mountain climbing. It is very difficult; one must combine a great deal of stamina with the ability of a world-class gymnast.

I've been mistagged. I like ice climbing, but I do a lot more rock climbing. Ice is just more mysterious and changeable than rock.

I still value the adventurous side, confronting the mountain on its terms, more than I value actual success in terms of getting to the top. That has very little meaning to me.

The kind of climbing I like is fast and as free as possible of gadgetry.

You have to have a lot of experience and confidence and a willingness to go down when things aren't right and try again. That's when people in the Himalayas get hurt, when they don't have the knowledge or willingness to retreat when necessary. There's no place for a macho attitude in the Himalayas. It's what gets people killed.

It's dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. The greatest risk of injury is knocking off a piece of ice with your pick and having it fall on your forehead.

I always thought if I died in the mountains, it would put an asterisk on my climbs.

The idea of metanoia returns again and again in my life. The purpose of life is to see what you do when challenges come your way, and the value in that experience is seeing how you handle those challenges.

I never did end up getting any skills that are marketable in a traditional sense, but I have used my knowledge of the mountains, and I have no regrets.

I have always felt that no climb is worth losing the tip of a little toe.