“Never depend on those luck moments – they are gifts – but instead always build your own back-up plan.”

“The difference between ordinary and extra-ordinary is so often just simply that little word - extra. And for me, I had always grown up with the belief that if someone succeeds it is because they are brilliant or talented or just better than me… and the more of these words I heard the smaller I always felt! But the truth is often very different… and for me to learn that ordinary me can achieve something extra-ordinary by giving that little bit extra, when everyone else gives up, meant the world to me and I really clung to it…”

“Many people find it hard to understand what it is about a mountain that draws men and women to risk their lives on her freezing, icy faces - all for a chance at that single, solitary moment on the top. It can be hard to explain. But I also relate to the quote that says, Iif you have to ask, you will never understand.”

“I mean, in the last few months alone, I've been pinned in a big set of white-water rapids, been bitten by an angry snake in a jungle, had a close escapewith a big mountain rockfall, narrowly avoided being eaten by a huge croc in the Australian swamps, and had to cut away from my main parachute and come down on my reserve, some five thousand feet above the Arctic plateau.When did all this craziness become my world?It's as if - almost accidentally - this madness had become my life. And don't get me wrong - I love it all.The game, though, now, is to hang on to that life. Every day is the most wonderful of blessings, and a gift that I never, ever take for granted.Oh, and as for the scars, broken bones, aching limbs and sore back?I consider them just gentle reminders that life is precious - and that maybe, just maybe, I am more fragile than I dare to admit.”

“Time and experience have taught me that fame and money very rarely go to the worthy, by the way - hence we shouldn't ever be too impressed by either of those impostors. Value folk for who they are, how they live and what they give - that's a much better benchmark.”

“You can't become a decent horseman until you fall off and get up again, a good number of times. There's life in a nutshell.”

“If you risk nothing you gain nothing”