15 Quotes by Chris Sharma

The rock still has something to teach me.

One of the things that separates climbing from other sports is how independent and personal it is. With most sports, you either win or lose, but climbing is about your own personal experience.

Climbing is an artistic, creative thing; it’s about being spontaneous, traveling, seeing the world, hanging out. It’s a balance of setting goals while enjoying the process, being ambitious without being too competitive.

There are strong people who aren’t able to climb. It’s about reading the rock, knowing how to position your body and having the tenacity to not let go.

The best climbers have the will to hold on. They won’t give up and keep trying over and over.

For me now, I feel that climbing is a part of who I am. It’s my way of life. It’s my way of expressing myself. My way of being in the world. In the past, I questioned it a lot. Now it’s obvious. This is who I am. This is what I do.

With climbing you can go to the most beautiful places on the planet and practice. Anywhere there is rock, you can climb.

I would like to be myself in life – my real self. My ego, though, is powerful and not necessarily working in my best interest all the time. Even when climbing I can’t escape the clutches of my ego. The reason why I started climbing was because I could be free from myself.

Climbing is my lifelong journey. And in the same way you go running and you have days where you really feel in tune, you have some days where you don’t feel that good. It’s this never-ending process. Accepting that and enjoying that for what it is, that’s really where the life of climbing is.