Quotes from Stephen Alter

I study her visage, the fluted snow fields and couloirs of ice scoured by avalanches. Horizontal bands of rock curve downward, as if bearing the weight of the sky. Her summit is like a fulcrum on which the heavens lean, balancing the setting sun and rising moon.

Humanity is a deceptive noun that suggests our best qualities as a species, though it often masks prejudice and inequity.

He likes to quote the Sufi poet Rumi: 'Travel leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller', an aphorism also attributed to the Moroccan explorer, Ibn Battuta.

If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. —Ralph Waldo Emerson