I hate being called an 'icon.' I just don't like it. That's all there is to it.

I had never experienced anything like it before and I don't think I have experienced anything like it since [on Ruapehu]. It was my dreams coming true in a way, and from there on I tended to become more of a doer than a dreamer.

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.

I was definitely seriously affected [with wifw and daughter deaths], no question, but I learnt to devote myself to the things that we'd been doing for years and years and slowly the pain drifted away.

I would like to be remembered for the schools and hospitals and bridges and all the other activities that we did with the Sherpas. Unquestionably, they are the things I feel that were the most worthwhile of everything I was involved in.

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.

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.