The kids growing up is a separate strand to your life. However bad a day you've had, that's the most important thing, and you have to remember that.

I've always been blessed, or cursed, some might say, with an insatiable curiosity, a desire to find something out about a people and a place. That's where it all begins.

I wanted to be an explorer, but gradually found the world had been explored and that there was nowhere left, really. Once they climbed Everest in 1953, when I was 10 years old, I thought, 'Well, that's pretty much it now.' But the idea of travelling and exploring and adventure was very strong.

I've been lucky enough to stand on both poles, but the place that seemed the remotest to me was Butugychag, a former gulag in Siberia. It is completely cut off from the rest of the world.

The personality problem is so tough when you're not able to pay people. It's bad enough when you can pay people, but, when you have people working for free, often their motivation is diminished considerably.

The Special Olympics motto, 'Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt,' really speaks to me because it embodies exactly what I have pursued in my life. Really, that's all any of us can hope for - a chance to be brave and to pursue a dream.

We tell them that we believe it will be beautiful because that is our specialty, we only create joy and beauty. We have never done a sad work. Through the drawings, we hope a majority will be able to visualize it.

I believe in what I call 'the surfer's theory.' You see a really, really big wave. You keep surfing, keep going forward. You just don't look back.