“I was always brought up to have a cup of tea at halfway up a rock face.”

My best life lessons and education didn’t come from a classroom – they’ve come from the wild. How you act in the big moments, the ones that challenge you, scare you, tempt you, and force you to make the right decisions, is what defines you.

Don’t be scared to dream big, and don’t be afraid to be close to people. And never give up! It’s the tenacious not the talented that win.

Once a job it has begun, do not stop until it’s done. Whether it is big or small, do it well or not all.

All worthwhile journeys have big obstacles. It’s the way of the world. The rewards go to those who can push through those trying moments and still manage to keep a smile on their face.

The special forces gave me the self-confidence to do some extraordinary things in my life. Climbing Everest then cemented my belief in myself.

I look back and understand the world a bit better and know how competitive it is .

The rules of survival never change, whether you’re in a desert or in an arena.

As a young boy, scouting gave me a confidence and camaraderie that is hard to find in modern life.

A friend once asked me what qualities were needed for SAS. I would say to be self-motivated and resilient; to be calm, yet have the ability to smile when it is grim; to be unflappable, be able to react fast and to have an ‘improvise, adapt and overcome’ mentality.

When I’m in ‘Man vs. Wild’ mode, it’s not pleasure. Every sensor is firing and I’m on reserve power all the time and I’m digging deep – and that’s the magic of it as well, and that’s raw and it’s great.

Survival can be summed up in three words – never give up. That’s the heart of it really. Just keep trying.

I love making healthy lean foods delicious – that’s an art!

And if you give your heart to a goal, it will repay you. It’s the law of the universe.

Sometimes it’s hard for us to believe, really believe, that God cares and wants good things for us and doesn’t just want us to go off and give everything up and become missionaries in Burundi.

Life’s full of lots of dream-stealers always telling you you need to do something more sensible. I think it doesn’t matter what your dream is, just fight the dream-stealers and hold onto it.

Our dreams are just wishes, if we never follow them through with action. And in life, you have got to be able to light your own fire.

Scriptural hope is not wishful thinking. It’s rock-solid assurance!

I hope my poetry has a relationship with good-time rock’n roll.

Take a dose of rock and roll, and wash it down with cool clear soul.

Stadium rock and commercial rock are the opposite of what poetry needs. An audience of around 200 is ideal for poetry.

I use rock and jazz and blues rhythms because I love that music.

He who falls in love meets a worse fate than he who leaps from a rock.

I actually had less time and the exact same budget on Hairspray, which was few years ago and this is a much bigger movie [then Rock of Ages]. That’s the way studios do it now.

There was a lot of stuff [in Rock of Ages] that had effects in it and I thought it was too smooth.