To struggle and to understand. Never the last without the first. That is the law.

What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money.

The greatest danger in life is not to take the adventure.

- Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest, Sir? - Because it is there.

We don't live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means, and that is what life is for.

One must conquer, achieve, get to the top; one must know the end to be convinced that one can win the end - to know there's no dream that mustn't be dared. . .

For the stone from the top for geologists, the knowledge of the limits of endurance for the doctors, but above all for the spirit of adventure to keep alive the soul of man.

One comes to bless the absolute bareness, feeling that here is a pure beauty of form, a kind of ultimate harmony.

We will stomp to the top with the wind in our teeth.

The highest of the world's mountains, it seems, has to make but a single gesture of magnificence to be the lord of all, vast in unchallenged and isolated supremacy.

Why do we travel to remote locations? To prove our adventurous spirit or to tell stories about incredible things? We do it to be alone amongst friends and to find ourselves in a land without man.

Patience is not a virtue. It is an achievement.

I've wasted the last five years of my life dealing in religious articles. People today find spiritual solace in ballroom dancing.

On Creating — What we crave, what we want to see in others eyes, is that servile expression, an unconcealed infatuation with our gestures.

Nobody would stay interested in me if I was normal

Those readiest to criticise are often least able to appreciate.

Life is bigger than our explanations of it. To be in touch with life, go beyond your explanations.

People were actually approaching me on the street and thinking that I was an athlete. They couldn't quite place it, but a runner, or swimmer or something.

We're going to play better, and we're going to play harder.

Strong coffee, much strong coffee, is what awakens me. Coffee gives me warmth, waking, an unusual force and a pain that is not without very great pleasure.

I make it a point of honour to have a couple of gnomes in my garden as silent testimony to the right of gnome-lovers everywhere to do their own thing without fear of snide remarks.