“I’ve eaten sheep’s eyes, the still hot meat from a zebra killed by a lion, and maggots which give you 70 calories to the ounce.”

I try and eat really healthy when I’m home, but I certainly don’t eat worms and snakes.

I’ve fallen down crevasses, been bitten by snakes, been knocked unconscious, had various limbs broken and once, a heavy camera came plunging down which very nearly decapitated me.

I never wanted to do TV. I just did what I was trained to do through the Special Forces, and I’ve been doing that from a very young age.

Survival is not about being fearless. It’s about making a decision, getting on and doing it, because I want to see my kids again, or whatever the reason might be.

The appeal of the wild for me is its unpredictability. You have to develop an awareness, react fast, be resourceful and come up with a plan and act on it.

There’s no magic to running far or climbing Everest. Endurance is mental strength. It’s all about heart.

Success almost always follows great attitude. The two attract each other!

Never depend on those luck moments – they are gifts – but instead always build your own back-up plan.

Americans are cool, if you show just a chink of vulnerability, they respond so much. They’ll pat you on the arm and say, ‘Hey kid, you’re all right’. Brits will respond but they are much more cynical.

You can’t become a decent horseman until you fall off and get up again, a good number of times. There’s life in a nutshell.

Textbook survival tells you to stay put. Stop. Wait for rescue. Don’t take any risks. But there’d been a whole host of survival shows like that and I didn’t really want to do that.

I train five days a week hard – but it is short and sharp – 30 to 40 minutes of functional and pretty dynamic body-strength circuits, then I do a good yoga session on the sixth day, then I rest.

I always had a really natural faith as a kid. Where I knew God existed and it felt very free and pretty wild and natural, and it wasn’t religious.

I’ve never really had a TV career. I’ve been a soldier and a climber.

Yes, the Boy Scouts of America should definitely allow gay adult leaders and I think it’s really going to hold them back if they don’t.

Our fate is determined by how far we are prepared to push ourselves to stay alive – the decisions we make to survive. We must do whatever it takes to endure and make it through alive.

As I lift up my eyes to Him and accept it as coming from the throne of God for some great purpose of blessing to my own heart.

Snow can burn your eyes but only people make you cry.

There’s a lot to do when you’re a kid – spiders to catch, girls to poke in the eye – stuff to be getting on with.

A comedy is just a tragedy interrupted, I once said. Do you finish with the kiss or when she opens her eyes to tell him she loves him and sees blonde hairs on his collar?

A girl becomes a wife with her eyes wide open. She knows that those sweetest words.

I dont know whether you’ve ever looked into a miner’s eyes for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you’ve ever seen.

Beauty is in the strangest places. A piece of garbage floating in the wind. And that beauty exists in America. It exists everywhere. You have to develop an eye for it and be able to see it.

I think perhaps that’s why I live in Ibiza, because the blue of the Mediterranean, you see, reminds me of the blue of the eyes of those Doncaster miners.