Quotes from Simon Reeve

I can remember everything about that moment because she gave me simple advice that guided me then, and still does to this day. 'If it's difficult for you,' she said, 'just take it all slowly. Take things step by step.

But we have to try the local food. It's a window into the culture. We learn so much about a people from what and how they eat. I actually quite enjoy the strange food. It's never too awful and it gifts a good tale.

Never waste a meal eating something boring when you could be trying something exciting. That's part of the joy of travel, because food is such a brilliant way of racking up great memories. And remember, it's hardly ever going to kill you.

The bear is stabbed on its side and a ten-inch needle or tube is inserted into the gall bladder, and then usually just left there with a pump attached. The bile contains an acid used in traditional medicine to . . . well, who cares what it's used for. It's completely mad and completely obscene.

In their place the Americans arrived, and NASA decided to use the airfield as an emergency landing strip for the space shuttle, apparently paying something like £30 million per year in rent. Yusuf could see that I looked completely disbelieving. 'It's true!' he said with a smile. 'It was just in case the shuttle had trouble on re-entry and couldn't make it around the planet and back to the US. You see, we have more surprises to share with you, Simon.

They were waving and chanting as we passed them, so I waved back. 'They're taunting you, Simon,' said Emery, laughing. 'What are they saying, then?' 'It's a song. White man – your breath stinks.

The International Organisation on Migration (IOM) has concluded there are more Ethiopian doctors working in Chicago than in the whole of Ethiopia. One study found that an astonishing 77 per cent of physicians trained in Liberia were actually working in the US.

He nodded. 'We can circumcise a hundred boys an hour.

Often they can help to entrench poverty by encouraging people in remote communities empty of employment to do little but drink, fester and wait for the next handout from their relative abroad.

By creating a park, and then providing jobs and salaries to local communities, we give economic incentives to people to protect what all of us surely want to preserve.

As I left the Dayaks I felt torn. They had been endlessly welcoming to me, but they were also openly admitting involvement in, and responsibility for, mass killing. It reinforced what I had found during the previous decade, when I had been investigating terrorism, arms smuggling and organised crime, which was that situations are rarely clear-cut, hardly ever black and white, and good people can do bad things, while bad people can definitely do good. Humans are just so damn complicated.

Humans are just so damn complicated.

Small children in uniforms sang 'our army is the best army' with evident pride, and the army goose-stepped along the main road past a platform of officers awarded medals by the kilo.

I was late to meet them. I had arrived early but walked into the small market town, not to check if I was being followed or anything professional, but to send a postcard to my mum, telling her I was out of London.

Critically, I realised that terrorists, who I had always imagined as horned devils, could be worryingly human.

One moment I would be collecting the mail or a bundle of designer clothes for a photoshoot from the courier drop-off point at 'Gate Six' at the far end of the Wapping plant, and the next I'd be asked to work on an investigation into drug smuggling or the IRA. With hindsight, it was absurd.

Then a senior KGB officer appeared and apologised for the misunderstanding. 'Perhaps we can go for a drink to smooth this over,' he suggested. We were all released into the night and agents gave each of us KGB cap badges as souvenirs.

I was reminded of an African proverb: when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.

I remember driving back from Portsmouth so tired that a voice in my head said I'll just close my eyes until I get to the bridge ahead. The next thing I knew was the wheels rumbling over the cat's eyes. I had tried to take a nap while driving. I'm not sure what Darwin would make of that.

You think that's what America wants – to rule the world and crush you?' The man answered with a sneer. 'America will die. Why? Because they're 25 million gays, more than 4 million lesbians, 17 million drug addicts and many people who live in poverty.

Three times during our talk the militant said he wanted to martyr himself against the West, making Kadyr nervous he was about to blow himself up in our van.

I conducted an investigation for Time magazine into how the Swiss put Jews into labour camps during the Second World War. That caused a stink, and Swiss newspapers paid an infamous private investigator to steal the contents of my bins in an attempt to find some dirt on me.

I still cannot define a noun, let alone a definite or indefinite article, or an objective personal pronoun. I rely on spell-check to guide my use of 'to' or 'too'. Does it matter? Colleagues said to me: 'If you want to write, just get on and write. Don't wait for a qualification.

He kept telling James and me how proud he was of us. I reminded Dad how he had spotted the advert in the newspaper that kick-started my little journey. I made sure he knew that without his encouragement I would probably never have made anything of my life. I knew and I know he always loved me.