The greatest danger in life is not taking chances. There are so many negative people wanting to grind you down, but you can't let them. If people say you are mad, you know you're on the right track.

I met Picasso when I was a kid. I turned one of his drawings down which would be worth £37 million now. My dad wouldn't talk to me for a fortnight.

I've become quite a serious explorer: I've been to Everest three times; I'm the oldest man to reach the North Pole; and I've just been to the lost world of Venezuela.

Wishing kindness and compassion to all living creatures.

The misapprehension about me is that I am some loud, rampant maniac. I am actually very pensive and quiet.

There will be no funeral! Before I get too old and ill, I'll go to South America and live among the Pemon people and meditate. When the time is right, they can throw my body into the volcano.

I fed my Yak on my spare Cadbury chocolate 21,0000ft up Everest. It was a blonde, very sweet female Yak. I made it my pet after that.

In the news this week, the polls continue to slide for Gordon Brown and some people are saying he's dead and buried. But I think the opposite - I say GORDON'S ALIVE!

I'll never retire. The new millennium is the age of adventure as far as I am concerned. I'm going up a volcano and off into space.

My dream is to own a Hockney - I'm a Yorkshireman, and his vibrant colours are a good example of how the north-country people are vibrant and colourful.

In the Arctic I met some Russian sailors on a submarine and they chorused, "Gordon's alive!"

. . . a constitution, intended toendure for ages to come, andconsequently, to be adapted to thevarious crises of human affairs.

We get strength and encouragement from watching children.

The planet's environmental woes tend to be overlooked as we scramble for the latest high-tech gizmos - and conveniently ignore their energy consumption.

My characters all start with rhythms and sounds. Once I hear the voice and get into the rhythm, the attitude and the physicality just come out on their own.

I want girls to feel the confidence you get from being smart.

A person will gain everyone's approval if he mixes the pleasant with the useful.

What distinguished my life from my brother's is that my mother didn't like me. When I became a woman, I seemed to repel her.

I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.

You can't have been here long, you haven't got a pot belly.

Comedians don't get Oscars, so I gave up on that a long time ago. And I can't really speak about the Oscar-worthiness of my own performance.