Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Charley Boorman

Ewan McGregor and I ate a lot of strange things on our motorcycle journey around the world, but the strangest had to be a meal we had in Mongolia.

I customise and build motorbikes and I can fix them myself.

When my sister died, I had my first child.

Often dyslexic kids will excel in being a little bit mischievous or tying to find attention in other ways because they're not getting it in class.

I grew up in Ireland, in the Wicklow Mountains just behind Dublin, and got a job in a Volkswagen garage when I was 14. I did it in the summer for about five weeks. My father thought it would be a great idea because I was really into bikes.

I grew up in Wicklow, near Roundwood. It's a beautiful place on the east coast. That's where I started riding bikes.

You hear stories about the horror crashes of the Dakar Rally, which is a long 16-day race, and about people getting lost in the desert, and they're all true. Every 20 minutes, you were just about to crash. Bikes, cars and trucks all race at the same time.

No-one's ever satisfied.

You need to channel your inner dog: know when you need food and when you need rest. And if you get stressed, know when you need to go walkies.

Nothing interesting ever happens on motorways or in hotels.

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.

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 always think that a bit sad - that people think their wives would stop them doing what they wanted to do.

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

I had a wife, kids and a mortgage and my acting career was nowhere, so I was painting and decorating people's homes.

I have a reading problem and it's hard for me to read books. But I had no problem with the 'Emerald Forest' script.

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

Dad was a tough cookie. He expected a lot from people when they were employed to do a job. If they don't do it properly there's not much time for pampering. He came from making films like 'Deliverance' and 'Point Blank.' He was renowned for taking on tough movies. He revels in that kind of thing and people feed off that enthusiasm.

I've crashed a lot in the past.

On the Internet you can swap GPS details and use tools like Google Maps. It's amazing.

I remember taking a 4x4 up the Sani Pass in South Africa, which goes up into Lesotho. It's a dangerous hairpin trail on this treacherous road and I went up in winter. Half of the road stays in the shade. We turned the corner on this hairpin and just hit black ice.

I found I was being pushed to one side and I was being ear-marked as being thick, which is a very damaging thing to be told as a young kid.

You need to put yourselves in places where adventure can find you.

I was a child actor in 'Deliverance,' but not the banjo player. It was my dad's big movie as a director, and at the very end there's a scene where Jon Voight comes home to his wife. I played his young son.

The experience of riding an electric bike is very different. Because there was no engine noise and no big vibration coming from the bike, it wasn't as stressful.

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.

We discovered that often it was better to sleep in a nice familiar tent than to go off and look for a hotel.

He was an amazing actor and could mimic anybody's voice. My sister Katrine was walking past one day and could hear our dad shouting and thought, 'God, I won't go in that room!' but realised it was Nicol Williamson mimicking my father's voice perfectly.

I have been working since I was three.

Apart from my weight, I wouldn't change anything about the way I look: you've got what you've got - make the most of it!

Lee Marvin was my godfather and a very close friend of my father's. My father directed the very successful 'Point Blank' in which Lee Marvin starred.

Like many men, I had never thought of testicular cancer and was lazy at getting check-ups.

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.

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

The thing about Mongolia is that it's incredibly difficult to grow vegetables there, so mostly we ate muttony stews.

Everyone needs a bit of adrenalin in their lives.

I'm competitive but I'm not butch.

Children aren't meant to die before their parents.

When you're nuts about motorbikes, sooner or later, you get to the point where you really want to do a long journey.

There's a whole culture now where you meet travellers who don't give you a scrap of paper with their address on it, they give their GPS coordinates. 'I've seen this amazing place in Malawi you've got to go to! I'll give you the coordinates!'

Always bring a pack of baby wipes with you.

GPS devices are fantastic, but when travelling, especially in the middle of Africa, you must always bring a map as well.

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 think it's really important for people to have a passion... a hobby... riding horses or climbing or riding motorcycles or whatever it is. It's very good for the soul. And if you can find a soulmate with whom you can share similar experiences with... one who enjoys them as much as you do, then it's kind of a match made in heaven really.

At the time when I was going to school in Ireland people didn't really have a clue about what it was, so I had to spend a lot of my time trying to explain to teachers what dyslexia meant.

I'd agree to a film because it sounded like it was going to be filmed in a nice place and only afterwards I would check out the story to find it was rubbish.

I don't have to win at tennis. I have a friend who is so competitive at tennis I sometimes throw a game because I know it means so much to him.

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.

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?

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

I think obviously when you're first diagnosed with cancer you definitely panic and that your mind races and thinks the worst but I was extremely lucky.

I'm amazed how unable I am to deal with the demands that are made on me as an actor. Not the one I enjoy, which is standing in front of a camera or onstage pretending to be someone else but everything else that comes with it.

You need to think Gucci when you are camping - make things as luxurious as you can.

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.

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

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

Whenever I get home the house becomes messy and chaotic. Kinvara, my daughter, said, 'Mummy, do you like it when Daddy is away, because the house is nice and clean?'