There are lots and lots of challenges that I wished - at the time - that I had done.There are lots of occasions where there were exciting things to be done but for some reason or another it was physically impossible for us to do them. I still wouldn't mind if I was able to go down into this most impressive valley in the Antarctic, but of course those things are beyond me now.

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

I was a dreamer when I was at high school and even primary school. I used to dream about doing adventurous things.

I will come again & conquer you because as a mountain you can't grow, but as a human, I can

I've always hated the danger part of climbing, and it's great to come down again because it's safe But there is something about building up a comradeship - that I still believe is the greatest of all feats - and sharing in the dangers with your company of peers. It’s the intense effort, the giving of everything you’ve got. It’s really a very pleasant sensation.

I think that a good mountaineer is usually a sensible mountaineer.

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.