"After brewing green tea in a blackened tin pot, he added salt, baking soda, and goat's milk, before tenderly shaving a sliver of mar, the aged rancid yak butter that Balti prize above all other delicacies, and stirred it into the brew with a not especially clean finger." (Chapter 2, p. 22)

"'Children had taken the first step toward building the school,' Mortenson says. 'And they did it with something that's basically worthless in our society—pennies. But overseas, pennies can move mountains.'" (Chapter 6, p. 52)

"He hadn't cried since Christa's death. But there, alone in a windblown goat pasture, he buried his face in his hands and swabbed furiously at tears that wouldn't stop." (Chapter 8, p. 93)

"Could it be that even a partially employed American who lived out of a storage locker could seem like little more than a flashing neon dollar sign to people in the...