I had learned years ago never to give original documents to anyone if I could help it.

A journey, I reflected, is of no merit unless it has tested you.

Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.

Most journeys have a clear beginning, but on some the ending is less well-defined. The question is, at what point do you bite your lip and head for home?

I felt sure we could gain the upper hand by putting ourselves in the mindset of the Incas.

Usually, there is nothing more pleasing that returning to a place where you have endured hardship.

In moments of great uncertainty on my travels, I have always felt that something is protecting me, that I will come to no harm.

There's nothing like a pack of mules to give one a sense of entourage.

The first rule of an expedition is that everyone should stick together.

When I am about to embark on a difficult journey, I comfort myself by reading the accounts of the great nineteenth-century travellers, men like Stanley, Burton, Speke, Burckhardt and Barth.

[T]hrough bitter experience I have learned that it is best to promise little and then to reward hard work with generosity.

You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it's always just one person encountering the book, it's not an audience, it's one to one.

Don't worry what people say or what people think. Be yourself.

I regret not having enough training, I trained for a year at The Royal Court, but I very quickly went off to do films and television.

It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.

At this point, I think I would garner a lot of hate mail if I was now on the cover of Modern Drummer seeing as I'm not a modern drummer anymore.

All of us are so mixed. My great-grandfather was white.

I think you should do rehearsal and work at it, but when the camera rolls, you should be ready. Try to make it good the first time.

I am a man of constant sorrow. I've seen trouble all my days.

Committing yourself is a way of finding out who you are. A man finds his identity by identifying.

But I want to pray to Allah. I want to be a Christian.