I became a very simple person. The simple things are the most precious to me. I don't ascribe much significance to the things I have now. That feeling of touching death has never left me.
I'm not an expert on India-Pakistan relations, but, Pakistan is big enough without Kashmir and India too is big enough without Kashmir.
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.
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.
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.
A professional knows what's impossible. If you know it's impossible, it is impossible. But if you don't know it's impossible, suddenly it is possible.
As to the Amazon itself, the transition from conservation to sustainable development was a huge awakening since conservation was a western concept and strategy to encourage the developing world to protect biodiversity resources for the sake of future generations and the wellbeing of the planet.
Survival is very powerful. All your faculties want to cling to life. We're not tested usually, luckily, but when we are, we become superheroes.
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.
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.
Sometimes experience is an obstacle because you cast your future based on your past experience.
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.
I was young, out of the military service in Israel. I was looking for a big adventure, and I was searching for it.
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 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.
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.
