You can't live someone else's expectations in life. It's a recipe for disaster.

Life doesn't reward the naturally clever or strong but those who can learn to fight and work hard and never quit.

I was always brought up to have a cup of tea at halfway up a rock face.

I do see a lot of the hard end of ecology, and my feeling is that we live on a super-exciting planet but a super-fragile one.

There's no magic to running far or climbing Everest. Endurance is mental strength. It's all about heart.

Are you the sort of person who can turn around when you have nothing left, and find that little bit extra inside you to keep going, or do you sag and wilt with exhaustion? It is a mental game, and it is hard to tell how people will react until they are squeezed.

All my life the only thing I've been good at has been climbing and throwing myself off big things.