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.

I like to think of Everest as a great mountaineering challenge, and when you've got people just streaming up the mountain - well, many of them are just climbing it to get their name in the paper, really.

It's not a real adventure when you have to pay for it.

People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.

With practice and focus, you can extend yourself far more than you ever believed possible.

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.

When you're climbing at high altitudes, life can get pretty miserable.