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 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.

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.

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.

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!"

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.

Do those people who hold up the Bible as an inspiration tomoral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is actually writtenin it?

Necessity is the mother of all invention.

Artistically I'm curious. But in life? No. I can go to a restaurant and order the same thing for 10 years.

It's outrageous. It's ridiculous. And 'twas ever thus. We all watched James Bond as he got more and more geriatric, and his girlfriends got younger and younger. It's so annoying.

No true Dharma Master behaves with rage, hate, ranting, self- importance. These are signs of mental instability, a character flaw. Never follow such a one as that.

I'm obviously not going to give you everything about my whole life, but as far as my personality, you see me all the time from watching the games.

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.

Live your dream and never wake up

There's a quality we could call vertical attention, which is an attention upward toward ancestors, spiritual states, angels, gods.