I should like to save the Shire, if I could – though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them.

Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

I love travelling full stop – so while I’ve had some harrowing instances, I never look at them negatively. Memories are made when you’re travelling – not when you’re chained to your desk.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

A lot of people can’t stand touring but to me it’s like breathing. I do it because I’m driven to do it.

Love is an adventure and a conquest. It survives and develops, like the universe itself, only by perpetual discovery.

Well, the odds must be against anybody being able to fly around the world in a balloon on the first attempt. All of us who are attempting to go around the world in balloons are effectively flying in experimental craft because these craft cannot be tested.

Juvenile crime is not naturally born in the boy, but is largely due either to the spirit of adventure that is in him, to his own stupidity, or to his lack of discipline, according to the nature of the individual.

I spent more time on dark ships in danger zones than any other woman in the world.

If I see a mountain, I just pick up and hike it.

Perhaps one day I will go into space.

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world.

Hearing voices no one else can hear isn’t a good sign, even in the wizarding world.

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

I loved being Maleficent. I was quite sad to put my staff down and put my horns away because somehow, she just lives in a different world.

Not all those who wander are lost.

Listen; there’s a hell of a good universe next door: let’s go.

The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.

Aviation offered such fun as crossing the continent in planes large and small, trying the whirling rotors of an autogiro, making record flights. With these activities came opportunity to know women everywhere who shared my conviction that there is so much women can do in the modern world and should be permitted to do irrespective of their sex.

I’m not someone who sits at home and doesn’t like to go out, doesn’t like to watch movies. I like to live my life.

A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.

Adventure is worthwhile in itself.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

The thing about fantasy – there are certain things you just don’t do in fantasy.

I enjoyed climbing with other people, good friends, but I did quite a lot of solo climbing, too.

You may say, ‚Well, dragons don’t exist.‘ It’s, like, yes they do – the category ‚predator‘ and the category ‚dragon‘ are the same category. It absolutely exists. It’s a superordinate category. It exists absolutely more than anything else. In fact, it really exists.

It will be a killer, and a chiller, and a thriller, when I get the gorilla in Manila.

I think when people mean that Discworld books have become darker they really mean the series is growing up. In ‚The Colour of Magic‘ most of the city is set alight. It’s a joke, in much the same way that the Earth is destroyed almost at the start of Douglas Adams’s ‚The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.‘

The original ‚Hobbit‘ was never intended to have a sequel – Bilbo ‚remained very happy to the end of his days and those were extraordinarily long‘: a sentence I find an almost insuperable obstacle to a satisfactory link.

I have always loved blizzards, if only because of the driving experience – which is definitely an acquired taste.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times. It’s best not to ask questions and just enjoy.

Despite all I have seen and experienced, I still get the same simple thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb towards it.

I’ve always been a bit of a gypsy.

I love trying new things.

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

If you’re embarking around the world in a hot-air balloon, don’t forget the toilet paper.

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

I had a project for my life which involved 10 years of wandering, then some years of medical studies and, if any time was left, the great adventure of physics.

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them.

I’m not the sort of person who gives up on things. The first time we crossed the Atlantic in the balloon, it crashed, and we went on and did the Pacific. First time we crossed the Atlantic in a boat, it sank, and we went on and got the record. So, generally speaking, we will pick ourselves up, brush ourselves down, and carry on.

Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today; for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favourite haunt.

Life is an adventure, it’s not a package tour.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

When I was climbing, I built up a close relationship with the Sherpa people.

When I was a kid, I read the science-fiction shelves, and I read the fantasy shelves.

The word ‚romance,‘ according to the dictionary, means excitement, adventure, and something extremely real. Romance should last a lifetime.

My desire was not to pass any island without taking possession, so that, one having been taken, the same may be said of all.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built. And, rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

We wanted to step off our island and add the color of the third world. We got gold cigarette paper and stuck it around our teeth. We really did look like pirates and dressed to look the part.

Rebellion is what you make of it. When you’ve been on a tour bus for two months straight, and then you get in your car and drive wherever you want, that can feel rebellious.

The blurring of fantasy and reality is something that the Japanese herald in their life, in their day-to-day commercialism.

Exploration by real people inspires us.

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

Tolkien is eminently filmable, I think. ‚The Lord of the Rings‘ is intensely… landscaped. But ‚Discworld‘ is about dialogue, which is one reason why it might be hard to film.

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

I was scared many times on Everest, but this is all part of the challenge. When I fell down a crevasse, it was pretty scary.