It's because I have no sense of shame that I'm always willing to give things a go: I've ridden horses naked into the sea, I've climbed rocks, all kinds of things.
I have climbed Everest from the Nepal route and the China route. The other routes are too hard for me. So I don't think I can climb Everest again.
The biggest accomplishment, in racial terms, for Barack Obama was being elected. He had to overcome his blackness to be elected. He climbed the Mt. Everest of American politics, becoming an historic first.
I climbed nine mountains because I love adventure, and I got addicted to that feeling and I never wanted to stop. I wanted to see what I could accomplish. I finally can say that I stood on top of the world.
I never liked dolls or played house. I read and wrote, climbed trees, collected rocks, rode my bike, and befriended boys, platonically.
So I go to my first book signing, and these two girls came up and gave me a piece of paper: '10 reasons you should date our dad. He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. He's a lawyer.' He didn't know what was going on. He didn't even know me. They called him, and he came down and asked me out that day. Now I'm dating their dad!
It's amazing that more people have climbed Mount Everest than have broken the 4-minute mile.
In the two million years during which we climbed from stone-tool-wielding Homo erectus with sloping brows to high-foreheaded Homo urbanis - man, the inventor of the city - we underwent 60 glaciations, 60 ice ages.
When I was 11 years old, my parents wanted me to do something besides get in trouble. So they enrolled me in sailing classes at the Sea Shell Association in Santa Barbara, Calif. From the moment I climbed into that 8-foot dinghy in 1952, I knew instinctively what to do and sensed I had done it before.
The Internet is part of this ongoing, species-long project we've been working on since we climbed down out of the trees in the savanna. We've been working on it without really knowing it.
While the developed world has shifted from agriculture to manufacturing and then to services, the number of jobs has always climbed.
I climbed Mount Everest. I don't quit.
The days of exploration of Shackleton and Scott are long gone. Everything has been climbed, crossed, done. Now what we're exploring are the full boundaries of human endeavour. It's not physical - it's all in the head.
