I think the really good mountaineer is the man with the technical ability of the professional and with the enthusiasm and freshness of approach of the amateur.

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

My mother was a schoolteacher and very keen that I go to a city school, so although it was fairly impoverished times, I traveled every day to the Auckland Grammar School.

There is something about building up a comradeship - that I still believe is the greatest of all feats - and sharing in the dangers with your company of peers. It's the intense effort, the giving of everything you've got. It's really a very pleasant sensation.

Life is rife with frustrations, jealousies and, on occasion, an overwhelming sense of its injustices, but it's a big mistake to let such negative sentiments rule our lives and dictate choices.

Hard as it is to believe, there were three magazines fighting over me. 'Newsweek' wanted to keep me, 'ESPN The Magazine' was coming into existence and wanted me, and 'SI' wanted to bring me back. Isn't that amazing? I had a choice, like a free agent.

This world would be a better place if people just realized that there's no written-in-stone set time to do anything. You could meet the love of your life at 18 or 48. You could become an amazing mom and be in the right head for that incredible journey at 24 or 42.

We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.