Despite all I have seen and experiences, I still get the same thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb toward it.

Ever since the morning of May 29, 1953, when Tenzing Norgay and I became the first climbers to step onto the summit of Mount Everest, I've been called a great adventurer.

It's not the moutain we conquer but ourselves.

I found fear stimulating. Particularly after you've done something that you'd been frightened of at the time, but you carried through and did the job.

I've often thought about that and the only suitable member to join me on that climb [to Everest] was George Lowe: he was strong, a good man on a mountain, with a great sense of humour, and I liked that. I think George and I could've done that together ... I've probably never told George that.

I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous.

My mother was a schoolteacher and very keen that I go to a city school, so although it was fairly impoverished times, I traveled every day to the Auckland Grammar School.