Not only during the ascent, but also during the descent my willpower is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goal_x000D_ seems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself. My attention_x000D_ has diminished, my memory is weakened. My mental fatigue is now_x000D_ greater than the bodily. It is so pleasant to sit doing nothing - and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is like death_x000D_ through freezing - a pleasant one.

What ever the course of our lives, we should recieve them as the highest gift from the hand of God, in which equally reposed the power to do nothing whatever for us. Indeed, we should accept misfortune not only in thanks, but in infinite gratitude to Providence, which by such means detaches us from an excessive love for Earthly things and elevates our minds to the celestial and divine.

An independant reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor to the agencies of observation.

The only thing that made me, or any of us, special was that no one in the whole of history would ever see the universe exactly the same way any other of us saw it.

The way I measure my life is 'Am I better than I was last year?'

I'm more alarmed by people reacting violently to the violence in my films than I am by the violence in films.