My parents were so proud when I got a scholarship to go to theatre school - it was unheard of that a coal-miners son should go to drama school.

I met Picasso when I was a kid. I turned one of his drawings down which would be worth £37 million now. My dad wouldn't talk to me for a fortnight.

I've become quite a serious explorer: I've been to Everest three times; I'm the oldest man to reach the North Pole; and I've just been to the lost world of Venezuela.

The greatest danger in life is not taking chances. There are so many negative people wanting to grind you down, but you can't let them. If people say you are mad, you know you're on the right track.

Wishing kindness and compassion to all living creatures.

The misapprehension about me is that I am some loud, rampant maniac. I am actually very pensive and quiet.

There will be no funeral! Before I get too old and ill, I'll go to South America and live among the Pemon people and meditate. When the time is right, they can throw my body into the volcano.

I fed my Yak on my spare Cadbury chocolate 21,0000ft up Everest. It was a blonde, very sweet female Yak. I made it my pet after that.

In the news this week, the polls continue to slide for Gordon Brown and some people are saying he's dead and buried. But I think the opposite - I say GORDON'S ALIVE!

I'll never retire. The new millennium is the age of adventure as far as I am concerned. I'm going up a volcano and off into space.

My dream is to own a Hockney - I'm a Yorkshireman, and his vibrant colours are a good example of how the north-country people are vibrant and colourful.

Don't be a fool for the Devil, darling.

The greatest duty is to know, love and obey God.

It is no longer a question anywhere of inventing interconnections from out of our brains, but of discovering them in the facts.

In death as in life, we stand together, always a family, always a team. The brotherhood never dies.

Do you know that it is in your company that I have had my finest thoughts?

The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.

Heaven always bears some proportion to earth. The god of the cannibal will be a cannibal, of the crusades a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant.

Stop bitching and try again.

Can't you . . . I don't know. Find a hobby or something?" "Being charming is my hobby," said Adrian obstinately. "I'm the life of the party— even without drinking. I wasn't meant to be alone.

In a way, film and television are in the same sort of traumatic trance that print journalism is. The technology has outpaced our comprehension of its implications.