Once I've decided to do something, I do usually try to carry it through to fruition.

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.

Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.

I still think have this deep desire for our Himalayan Trust - that we raise the necessary funds, that we do all the things that the Sherpas want us to do, and I would like to see us working together with them on these projects. Even though I'm old and decrepit I still have this strong feeling that I would like to carry these things out if it were still possible.

I'm a very, very modest person and with limited abilities. I do have the wish to succeed in anything I undertake, and that does help out, but, in general, there are so many other people who are skilled in their field that I feel very ordinary.

There is precious little in civilization to appeal to a yeti.

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.