Martin Luther King took us to the mountain top: I want to take us to the bank
While writing 'Cold Mountain,' I held maps of two geographies, two worlds, in my mind as I wrote. One was an early map of North Carolina. Overlaying it, though, was an imagined map of the landscape Jack travels in the southern Appalachian folktales. He's much the same Jack who climbs the beanstalk, vulnerable and clever and opportunistic.
The purest water is formed by flowing through the muddiest mountains
Take nothing for granted. Not one blessed, cool mountain day or one hellish, desert day or one sweaty, stinky, hiking companion. It is all a gift.
I am mountains that crush. I am waves that crash. I am storms that shatter. I am the end.
I have a need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt.
In Ireland we have a very old saying, When you can see the mountains it's going to rain and when you can't see the mountains it's raining.
On big routes in big mountains, speed equals safety.
When we ask God to move a mountain, God may give us a shovel.
Any time that you think you've hit the top of the mountain, the truth of the matter is you've just reached another mountain. And it's there to climb all over again.
Beyond what we wish and what we fear may happen we have another life, as clear and free as a mountain stream.
I am not enough to be only in the mountains, not enough to be on an expedition. I believe that if the walks uphill, then with some goal, and that goal is to climb to the top.
Where else can you be as free as by yourself in the middle of nowhere, or in the middle of the ocean, or on the peak of a mountain. Adventure is freedom.
Often the best guys are just those that can suffer longer, who don't give up. And it's so easy to give up, when you're on a mountain and it's really hurting. We go through a lot physically.
It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years?. . . What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.
If you truly hold a stone, you can feel the mountain it came from.
Why do we need faith when we have the technology to move mountains?
The conscience is the most flexible material in the world. Today you cannot stretch it over a mole hill; while tomorrow it can hide a mountain.
I have a grim outlook on the world, and in particular on humanity. Spent years denying it, but I am very misanthropic. And I live alone on a mountain for a reason.
In a big Bollywood romantic film, taking my shirt off and spreading the hand towards the mountain with dancers behind me are not my cup of tea.