Quotes from Yossi Ghinsberg

I have returned to the Amazon to thank the people that were involved in my rescue and upon meeting them I realised that their life is in danger. They have asked for my help on a community-based initiation of a tourism project.

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.

Living in Israel is similar to living in an island. It's a very small and isolated place. It's a very strong place in terms of the culture and the conditioning that you go through.

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.

I'd say that the only trauma I've suffered was existential.

I had no lasting physical trauma nor a psychological one. Yet, it was hard to return to the old path. I found myself asking big questions: Why was my life spared? What is my purpose here? And it led me to a life of inquiry.

Yes, I'm a fan, and 'The Lost City of Z' has been my inspiration. Percy Fawcett was one of my heroes, and I loved the book and the film. I was lost in the same area that Fawcett had explored, and I can identify with his sense of passion and obsession, and I definitely see the romance in searching for lost treasure.

Every time I found an egg to eat, or when I survived a storm in which trees were collapsing all around me, I felt that it was Providence. I don't need to believe - I know.

The corporate sector in my view is the most important since it is actively involved in the shaping of our life on the planet. The corporate world has the power and the means to influence politics and public trends.

I went to South America with the idea that I would be an explorer, that I'd find lost tribes, become one of them, marry the chief's daughter and find riches of gold.

I wanted to go to the extreme in the sense of places that were not explored and meeting people, tribes. I wanted to have an adventure.

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.

When you lose everything, then you have something. It's exactly the opposite because everything that you have, it's not really yours. What is yours, you don't need to earn. It's yours by right.

Despite the natural belittling of one's self, the doubts, the insecurities, we have to wake up to the realisation that we all write our own autobiography, we are the authors of our life story. Realising that, write a good story with your life and make sure to write yourself as the protagonist. Be the hero of your journey.

I was young, out of the military service in Israel. I was looking for a big adventure, and I was searching for it.

For two days I had the company of a girl. She appeared next to me. It was no less of a miracle if it was my imagination which had summoned her up, because it happened at the very moment I had broken down and given up.

You don't need too much to have an agenda of how to father. You just have to be a good person. The interactions at home between you and your spouse and the way you deal with your kids in certain situations, that's what they take.

I have discovered that inner search by far is the most uncharted domain and it needs great courage and determination to cut through the dense vegetation of the mind so to speak before arriving at the core.