If you're climbing the ladder of life, you go rung by rung, one step at a time. Don't look too far up, set your goals high but take one step at a time. Sometimes you don't think you're progressing until you step back and see how high you've really gone.

Climbing to the top demands strength, whether it is to the top of Mount Everest or to the top of your career.

When I did play team sports, I was into soccer and hockey. I loved hockey. And then rock climbing became the thing that got me out of Iowa, and I traveled the world for rock climbing. I really loved the, I guess you would say, dirtbag lifestyle of not eating much and traveling the world and slipping into different cultures and just observing.

There are a lot of things you can do in space, and space essentially is unlimited resources. We are climbing over ourselves here looking for the next source of energy. The universe has an unlimited source of energy.

But I think there's something wonderful and extraordinary about climbing on your own and just that kind of relationship to the environment. I'm very addicted to the mountains. You know, so, I do like that solitude.

When I was climbing, I built up a close relationship with the Sherpa people.

I've been blessed to be somebody that's been climbing that success mountain top for years of hard work, you know, but now it's all connecting. And now, the whole world is watching, you know what I'm saying, and it feels good 'cause it's good energy. This is all positive vibes, and good vibes and good energy, so it feels incredible.

I think a great first date would be something different... not like movies or going to dinner... going rock climbing together... doing an activity and then going to dinner, so that you guys share an experience, and then you have something to talk about, and it's not the same old thing.

Of course having a baby derails the writing process for some time. And I will be the first to say that I have essentially no social life, because there's just nothing left after being a mom, professor, and writer. I used to be big into rock climbing. No more. A lot falls by the wayside.

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

It is proper that noble spirits, equipped with truth and enlightened with the Divine intelligence, should arm themselves against dense ignorance by climbing up to the high rock and tower of contemplation.

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

After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.

I loved school, was an exceptional student, and found a passion for math and science that led me to Vanderbilt University, where I discovered the world of electrical engineering. I did well in college, loved the work I was doing, and soon found myself climbing the corporate ladder after graduation. I was one of the lucky ones.

I've never really understood the criticism that climbing is inherently selfish, since it could equally be argued about virtually any other hobby or sport. Is gardening selfish?

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.

We need a sustainable system of student finance that promotes opportunity, encourages aspiration, increases social mobility and is governed by fairness. But all the Tories can offer is unsustainable, mounting debt, punishing students for wanting an education. And discouraging thousands of young people from climbing the ladder to a better life.

Identifying and overcoming natural fear is one of the pleasing struggles intrinsic to climbing.

Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.

By climbing mountains we were not learning how big we were. We were finding out how breakable, how weak and how full of fear we are.

The diet for climbing all the time isn't really different from the diet for living. It's not like cardio sports where you're burning a bajillion calories every day.

I went to Westside School of Ballet in L.A. and I was climbing through the ranks. Then I got to pointe shoes and I was like, 'This is not cool, you guys. This is gonna be in textbooks, someday, along with Chinese foot-binding.' Anyway, it's not for me, so I got into doing different kinds of dance.

My family is Jamaican and Cuban, but we would go to see our Jamaican side every summer for three months and every Christmas. One of the things I used to love was climbing trees and picking ackee fruit for breakfast.

Yosemite has the most impressive and accessible granite big walls in the world. The rock is amazing. And because of that, it's been the mecca for climbing in the U.S. - and the world to a large degree - for all of climbing history. It's the place to test yourself against the historic routes of the past.