Jimmy Chin Quotes

I remember perfectly my first trip to New York, when I was on the bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan, when I saw the skyscrapers. It was like an incredible dream.

The World Trade Center was for me not only out of scale vertically, but it was also out of scale in plan. It occupied several blocks that were all massed together.

I dreamed my whole life of New York being my home.

New York rose out of the water like a great wave that found it impossible to return again and so remained there in horror, peering out of the million windows man had caged it with.

New York is a character, all on its own, and whenever you film there, it becomes part of the show. That's just the nature of being there.

I came to New York, and it was fascinating and intimidating and yielding, and all the stuff it's supposed to be. But whatever the abstract essence I was seeking, I couldn't find exactly that.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn't the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

I fell in love with New York.

Manhattan, though, was an entirely different ballgame in a whole different kind of world, with a man who was brilliant and at the same time terribly charismatic.

When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.

New York is the great stone desert.

New York means so much to people. If you're inclined to leave the nest, New York is where most people think they have to go, and it's been that way since the first skyscraper.

There's a kind of beauty to a skyscraper.

Not only did America invent the skyscraper, it invented the skyline.

I grew up with a very romantic, idealized vision of New York, probably because of all the books I read and the movies I watched.

I was in love with New York. I do not mean 'love' in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone quite that way again.

Lo! body and soul!--this land! Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and The sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships; The varied and ample land,--the South And the North in the light--Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn.

I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline.

Vehement silhouettes of Manhattan - that vertical city with unimaginable diamonds.

- Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest, Sir? - Because it is there.

Some day I'm going to climb Everest.

For however inhospitable the wind, from this vantage point Manhattan was simply so improbable, so wonderful, so obviously full of promise - that you wanted to approach it for the rest of your life without ever quite arriving.

We wanted to see how close we could get to the world record. We'll take that for right now.

Reach what you cannot

I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need?