Quotes from Charley Boorman

I'm very grateful to being dyslexic and I owe my career to being dyslexic.

Always bring a pack of baby wipes with you.

I think when you travel for long periods of time you become quite sensitive and emotional.

If anybody has walked down the road and someone says turn left and you take a right that's a form of dyslexia. If you write a number down backwards or you get the numbers mixed up a little bit occasionally, that's a form of dyslexia.

I broke both legs, which is why I ended up lying in bed for three months. It was six months before I could walk on one leg.

It's very rare that you get that period of time to hang out with your best buddy and ride motorbikes.

People warned us off lots of countries. Someone would say, for instance, 'Stay away from Sudan. It's full of thieves.' And we'd say, 'Have you been there then?' 'Er, no.'

Mongolia was unbelievable. Great parts of it are completely untouched by modern development, but the roads, when you could even call them that, were terrible and we'd find ourselves on the wrong route without any warning.

I'm competitive but I'm not butch.

Dad wanted me to act because it was a clever way of boosting my confidence.

There's a symmetry of blissfulness about Mongolia. It was a real privilege to be there.

Sometimes you take for granted what you have on your own doorstep.

The Irish are great talkers and incredibly friendly, it's just in the DNA.

Sitting on the back of my motorbike going from west to east through Mongolia was one of the most inspiring and awesome experiences I've ever had. There was so little influence of the western world.

My performances in auditions were so inept that I hardly got any jobs in film or TV. I just could not learn the lines and the thought of doing theatre terrified me. What if I forgot my lines in the middle of a scene with an entire audience watching?

In places such as Kazakhstan and Mongolia people depend on each other a lot more. We can often be quite detached in the West, with e-mail and telephones, whereas in those countries people rely on each other more. It's lovely because you feel like, although you're a stranger, they respect you as a friend and want to help you.

I had a wife and children. I was mostly working in painting and decorating and then taking the occasional acting job as they came along. At that stage in your life you have to think about your priorities. It looked like I was going to have to take the building more seriously and give up acting.

It took four days from discovering I had cancer to finding out how serious the problem was.

If you are going to try and convince somebody to travel, do it with a small map - the distances look like nothing on a small map.

The fundamental thing for anybody, any relationship or any expedition or anything is communication.

You get sentimental on the road. I'd see a horse with its foal and a tear would come to my eye.

I have a permanent moustache so I can be a 'Movator:' I take random telephone numbers and ring people up and 'movate' them to grow moustaches.

Everyone wants their children to go to school, to have a job, a roof over their head, feed their children.

It's very difficult to say what experience was the hardest. 'Long Way Round' was the first one, so we didn't know anything.