Found the source of the Skinner quote. Alpinist #20, referencing a Skinner quote somewhere deep in the sedimentary layers of the Climbing back catalog...
http://www.alpinist.com/doc/ALP20/features-squat-takeda
"We drove off in a huff. A few days later I read a Todd Skinner quotation in an old issue of Climbing: Vedauwoo's offwidths "filter out the weak, the soft and the spineless."
I'd been filtered."