“My faith isn’t very churchy, it’s a pretty personal, intimate thing and has been a huge source of strength in moments of life and death.”

If you risk nothing you gain nothing

All my life the only thing I’ve been good at has been climbing and throwing myself off big things.

Always keep the big picture in mind- you are greatly loved by Jesus and your job is to love Him and others in return. The rest is detail.

In the British Special Air Service, combat fitness is all about running.

My work is all about adventure and teamwork in some of the most inhospitable jungles, mountains and deserts on the planet. If you aren’t able to look after yourself and each other, then people die.

You can’t live someone else’s expectations in life. It’s a recipe for disaster.

I think viewers quite like it when I’m suffering or eating or drinking something horrible or really up against it in some quicksand or whatever.

When I take kids into the woods, I tell them, “What we’re going to do today is going to be incredibly dangerous.” And you just see 20 smiles go up.

I’m probably going to be the scruffiest Chief Scout you’ve ever had and my health and safety policy is non-existent.

You only get one chance at life and you have to grab it boldly.

Change the way you use your time, and you change your life.

Nobody wants to end up super rich and famous – but divorced. I’m always clear on that and try to stay on the right side of the line.

Faith is personal if it’s to be real.

There is little faith involved in setting out on a journey where the destination is certain and every step in between has been mapped in detail. Bravery, trust, is about leaving camp in the dark, when we do not know the route ahead and cannot be certain we will ever return.

Alpha was the best thing I ever did. It helped answer some huge questions and to find a simple empowering faith in my life.

The difference between ordinary and extra-ordinary is so often just simply that little word – extra. And for me, I had always grown up with the belief that if someone succeeds it is because they are brilliant or talented or just better than me…

The completely solitary self: that’s where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.

It is the mark of a great poet to write words that feel as though they have stood witness to your most intimate memory of love.

Yes, I think it is entirely possible to fall in love with someone you’ve never met. Physicality is an expression of intimacy- not an indication of it.

I consider abortion to be a deeply personal and intimate issue for women and I don’t believe male legislators should even vote on the issue.

I thought I had learned how to have an intimate relationship. And I thought I’d learned how to be happy. Everybody has issues. For me, the challenge is intimacy, but I really didn’t start to get that until I turned 60.

He was also removing all traces of any tiny leftover parts, and suddenly a ritual which I’d always found incestuous and gross seemed to me more like a desperate act on Joseph’s part to get out, to leave, to extract every little last remnant and bring it into open air.

I do not condemn any personal choices for intimate relationships. Love is love.

When I write, I do it urged by an intimate necessity. I don’t have in mind an exclusive public, or a public of multitudes, I don’t think in either thing. I think about expressing what I want to say. I try to do it in the simplest way possible.