“With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything.”

“On a hard jungle journey nothing is so important as having a team you can trust.”

“Buy a house in a foreign country and, it seems, that anything which can go wrong usually does.”

“Nothing was really so important to my father as the achievement of selflessness. He rarely mentioned it directly, but tried to guide us to it in a roundabout way.”

“It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.”

“Running an expedition can bring out the worst in a man. It can make you a power-crazed monster.”

“Back at the guest house I tried to acclimatise. A travel-worn adventurer had once told me that leaning with one's head dangling over the end of a bed was the best way to achieve this. It was while I was in this position, the blood rushing to my temples, that the door swung open.”