When you go to the mountains, you see them and you admire them. In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them.

Boredom has always been a problem.

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

If the going is tough and the pressure is on, If the reserves of strength have been drained and the summit is still not in sight, then the quality to seek in the person is neither great strength nor quickness of hand, but rather a resolute mind firmly set on its purpose that refuses to let its body slack or rest.

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.

My most important projects have been the building and maintaining of schools and medical clinics for my dear friends in the Himalaya and helping restore their beautiful monasteries, too.

I always refused to give in if there was some argument with my father. Whether it was true or not, I refused to admit it and so often I would - well, tell lies, perhaps. I would either do that or change the story. Particularly if I felt that my father was being unjust, then I was very strongly motivated to not accept his ruling.