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.

As a youngster I was a great dreamer, reading many books of adventure and walking lonely miles with my head in the clouds.

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.

Challenge is what makes men. It will be the end when men stop looking for new challenges.

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.

I get older I get more cantankerous, but June [Hillary] gets a bit more cantankerous, too.

I had a very strong desire to carry out adventures, but in those early days I didn't actually do any. I just dreamt about it.