"... We were at that age when you have the need and the instinct and the immodesty to inflict on others everything that is seething in your head and elsewhere; it's an age that can last a long time, but ends at the first compromise. Yet with him, even at that age, nothing had slipped out of his wrapping of restraint; ..."

"... But all was in vain: it was not enough to overcome the insensitivity to pain and the primordial strength that, for a few moments, nature grants us in a time of dire need."

"... Carlo, in perfect bad faith, said with a few harsh cackling syllables that my proposal was fine but, then again, 'by the easy northwest ridge' we could reach the Tooth of M. in half an hour; and that it wasn't worth being twenty-one if you didn't allow yourself the luxury of taking the wrong path."

"... Now I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing blind, deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you but your own hands and your own head."

"... We were at that age when you have the need and the instinct and the immodesty to inflict on others everything that is seething in your head and elsewhere; it's an age that can last a long time, but ends at the first compromise. Yet with him, even at that age, nothing had slipped out of his wrapping of restraint; ..."

"... But all was in vain: it was not enough to overcome the insensitivity to pain and the primordial strength that, for a few moments, nature grants us in a time of dire need."

"... Carlo, in perfect bad faith, said with a few harsh cackling syllables that my proposal was fine but, then again, 'by the easy northwest ridge' we could reach the Tooth of M. in half an hour; and that it wasn't worth being twenty-one if you didn't allow yourself the luxury of taking the wrong path."

"... Now I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing blind, deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you but your own hands and your own head."