My favorite mode of transport is hot-air ballooning. It’s so graceful to be blown by the wind, to go where the wind takes you.

Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket – half a million dollars. It can be done.

Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.

Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.

I’ve always been a bit of a gypsy.

After having dispatched a meal, I went ashore, and found no habitation save a single house, and that without an occupant; we had no doubt that the people had fled in terror at our approach, as the house was completely furnished.

The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

I have enjoyed great satisfaction from my climb of Everest and my trips to the poles. But there’s no doubt that my most worthwhile things have been the building of schools and medical clinics.

On the summit of Everest, I had a feeling of great satisfaction to be first there.

I’ve been here before and will come again, but I’m not going this trip through.

Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.

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

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.

I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I’ve got kids and responsibilities, so I can’t be my own test pilot. That wouldn’t be a good idea. But I definitely want to fly as soon as it’s a sensible thing to do.

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

Adventures are to the adventurous.

In small towns people scent the wind with noses of uncommon keenness.

I used to watch MotoGP quite a bit, I liked MotoGP. I had a motorbike before I had a go-kart and before I had a motorbike I had a quad bike but I was too dangerous, and before I did quad biking I did horse riding, so it’s been a long journey.

An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

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

I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.

Swimming has its educational value – mental, moral, and physical – in giving you a sense of mastery over an element, and of power of saving life, and in the development of wind and limb.

I’m someone who likes plowing new ground, then walking away from it. I get bored easily. For me, the big thrill comes with the discovering.

I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn’t that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. I’d already been translating French poetry, I’d been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went.

I love to travel, but hate to arrive.

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.

The physical sensation of gliding with the wind in your face is exhilarating. That automatic activity of pedalling, when you have to be awake but not think too much, allows you to let subconscious thoughts bubble up, and things seem to just sort themselves out. And the adrenaline wakes you up if you weren’t properly alert.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

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.

Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.

I’ve been everywhere in the world, seen everything, had everything a man can have.

Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.

No one remembers who climbed Mount Everest the second time.

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.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

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.

I got to Africa. I got the opportunity to go and learn, not about any animal, but chimpanzees. I was living in my dream world, the forest in Gombe National Park in Tanzania. It was Tanganyika when I began.

I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous.

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.

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

I have wanted to fly into space for many years, but never imagined it would really be feasible.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

If I wished to do something, even if I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to make the effort with me, I would go out solo climbing. I did find solo climbing very challenging and a little frightening. You knew that you were completely on your own, and you had to overcome all the problems and possible dangers.

When I would hear the rabbi tell about some miracle such as a bush whose leaves were shaking but there wasn’t any wind, I would try to fit the miracle into the real world and explain it in terms of natural phenomena.

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

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

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.

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

I think my first thought on reaching the summit- of course, I was very, very pleased to be there, naturally – but my first thought was one of a little bit of surprise. I was a little bit surprised that here I was, Ed Hillary, on top of Mt. Everest. After all, this is the ambition of most mountaineers.

Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.

Anyone who doesn’t have a great time in San Francisco is pretty much dead to me.

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

Life is the fire that burns and the sun that gives light. Life is the wind and the rain and the thunder in the sky. Life is matter and is earth, what is and what is not, and what beyond is in Eternity.

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.

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

Tomorrow morning before we depart, I intend to land and see what can be found in the neighborhood.

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.

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

The balloons only have one life and the only way of finding out whether they work is to attempt to fly around the world.

I love trying new things.

I shall make that trip. I shall go to Korea.