A biography for Reinhold Messnerhasn’t been written yet.
“My aim is not just to help preserve what is left of mountain life, but to create a centre where people can study and learn about it.”
“On your own, relying on yourself, you will never feel you are stronger than the mountain, and your respect for the peak grows.”
“I am a South Tyrolean. I identify with this land.”
“Crossing the Gobi was a real milestone for me.”
“My brother is in me. When we remember somebody else, in a certain way they are still alive. I see my brother - he is still young - looking to the Dolomites where we did our ascents. I remember those moments, so he is still together with me.”
“I can't tell people to love mountains. They have to find their own way.”
“I started the whole 'Into Thin Air' thing - nothing I'm proud of.”
“I am my own home, and my handkerchief is my flag.”
“A good expedition doesn't need a leader at all. You are deciding day by day, discussing it in a democratic way.”
“In my state of spiritual abstraction, I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits.”
“I go to the wild mountains where I am responsible for myself. Step by step I am making sure that I don't die.”
“People don't like reality, they like crazy stories.”
“Every week someone rings me up wanting to open a new Messner museum, but I'm not interested.”
“The art of climbing is the art of survival. The best climber is the man or woman going in the most crazy places but surviving.”
“I was 5 when I went up my first 10,000 ft mountain, with my parents, and I have been climbing ever since.”
“I go to the mountains for an adventure and each time I pray I will get up and down again.”
“Look, I do not control alpinism. But maybe I was too successful. Many in the mountaineering scene - journalists, second-rate climbers, lecturers, so-called historians - had a problem with me for many years.”
“I am not so proud to climb all the 8,000-meter peaks, but I was proud to climb Nanga Parbat solo. That was the most elegant thing I did.”
“I want to look into the dark spaces in people's souls. At what happens to us when we go to the mountains.”
“To me, it's just not that important whether someone climbs the Eigerwand in ten hours or in three.”