Not houses finely roofed or the stones of walls well builded, nay nor canals and dockyards make the city, but men able to use their opportunity.
I came out of the womb drawing on everything; I used to draw on my mother's white furniture and her white walls with her red lipstick and my pencils. Little did she know that would later materialize into me doing what I do now - I'm a painter as well and a micromechanical engineer.
A particular piece of music attaches itself to the piece I'm writing, and there is nothing else I can listen to. Every day I return to the same space to write, the music providing both the walls and the pictures on the walls.
The hardest part of 'Game of Thrones' is there is so much incredible talent bouncing off the walls that you'll actually miss some of them, and not getting it is very intimidating.
Seven years ago, when I started free soloing long, hard routes in Yosemite - climbing without a rope, gear or a partner - I did it because it seemed like the purest, most elegant way to scale big walls. Climbing, especially soloing, felt like a grand adventure, but I never dreamed it could be a profession.
Yosemite has the most impressive and accessible granite big walls in the world. The rock is amazing. And because of that, it's been the mecca for climbing in the U.S. - and the world to a large degree - for all of climbing history. It's the place to test yourself against the historic routes of the past.
There's only a handful of chicks in the world who can climb big walls on my level.
I love being scared, and I always have done. When I was younger, I was always reading books about the paranormal, UFOs, and crop circles. I liked the idea of people seeing faces in walls and twins that could communicate with each other telepathically. I really believed it, too!
You want to play as much as possible, but I am not the type of character to go bursting walls down.
Being away with a national side at a tournament can be hard - you train, go back to your hotel, and often, you sit in your room, watching TV or speaking to people at home. If there's no communal area, it can feel like being in prison, staring at the same four walls all the time.
