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.

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.

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

I think it all comes down to motivation. If you really want to do something, you will work hard for it.

I am a lucky man. I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men.

Everest you won't change, but I will get better...I will conquer you.

I have no desire to live anywhere else but New Zealand. I've had the good fortune to travel widely around the world, but New Zealand is home - and I like to be here. I'm proud to be a New Zealander.