Yossi Ghinsberg

I wanted to be like the heroes of the books I read. That's why I wanted to go to the jungle. I wasn't interested in danger from the adrenaline aspect, I was more interested in the romance.

My Uncle Nissim studied Kabbalah. Just before he died, he gave this tiny book, its pages yellow with age. He said it had special powers. I had a feeling that the book helped to keep me safe. My daughter is called Nissim after him.

At one point, I shook a tree full of fire ants on my head just to have some pain to distract me from my aching feet so that I could continue to walk.

Surviving is not something you need to learn. You don't need to learn survival skills; you have them already. That's why we're here, all of us, because it's a game of survival anyway.

So once you hit like that place, where everything is stripped from you, everything is taken from you, you really discover who you really are. I discovered that I'm a real hero, that I can deal with that situation, that I can rise up to the challenge.

Did I pray for death? I did one time. I wanted to die so badly. And I didn't want to die. I wanted to rest, you know. And I knew the only rest I would find is in death.

It was like a dream come true for me. When you write the book, it's still intimate. It might have been a best-seller but it's still my story, as I wrote it. The moment we or they make a movie, it's not my story anymore. There's a lot of letting go involved in the process.

You eat anything when you need energy to survive and there's nothing in your body, when you are becoming just bones and tissues and muscles and I don't wish those circumstances on anybody.

I'm not an expert on India-Pakistan relations, but, Pakistan is big enough without Kashmir and India too is big enough without Kashmir.

I think the main parenting or education you do for your children is by way of being, and not by way of having guidelines or some agenda. I think that life itself is constantly bringing learning opportunities.