Journeys to Impossible Places Quotes

“boredom is key for developing our imagination. A child who is never bored has no space to dream, or to work up a solution to their predicament, and less reason to create.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“You are people in a labyrinth. Just be. He needed to say nothing more. It was the essence of everything. The distillation of a thousand sacred texts and self-help manuals. Life can be a maze. Don’t always look for something more. Enjoy the now. Live for the moment.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“a wonderful young honey-voiced woman called Batsola Andrianjaka, who explained why Madagascans do not fear death the way we do in the West. ‘This is a country where death is more important than life,’ she had told me. ‘Death is the chance for a humble human to become a powerful ancestor, someone respected and consulted by the living.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“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.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“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.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“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.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“He claimed it was spatchcocked squirrel, but it looked more like a rat that someone had splatted with a hammer, around the time Stonehenge was built, and had then left preserved in a peat bog. It was possibly the least appetising thing I have ever seen. But I was there for telly, so I had a bite. The ‘squirrel’ didn’t taste any better than it looked.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“When it’s not a challenge I need to face, but something simply thrown at me by life, at a time when I have lost hope, perhaps when someone has died, I still use my step by step motto. Except I don’t head in a specific direction. I just try to do something – anything – and the sheer act of movement, in any direction, and the simple physicality of putting one foot in front of another starts to provide answers, solutions, and helps bring light into darkness.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“He had been on operations alongside his British counterparts and said that although American special forces teams had access to more resources, such as equipment, planes and satellites, the British were especially good because they endlessly ran through war-game scenarios. They practised, over and over. They prepared. ‘Then when it all goes south,’ said the American admiringly, ‘they really know what to do.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“Our driver bumped the cars in front and behind us to make space, then we crossed on to the other side in our big 4x4 and started driving the wrong way up the motorway, dodging cars coming at us. I thought back to it afterwards and decided it had felt worryingly normal. I realised I’d been munching on a flapjack and Craig had been texting. I wondered if we were becoming just slightly too immune to risk.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“My brain was whirring. James was having a baby. He is two years younger than me. My brother was taking the greatest life step before me. I was nearly 40. My wife was nearly 40. I desperately wanted children. But we had not even been trying. What on earth had we been waiting for? Anya’s clock was ticking. My clock was ticking. I was nearly the age my dad was when he had me. I had always thought of him as an old dad and that, unlike him, I would have children when I was younger. Being an old dad was now to be my unavoidable fate too. In that second – in that fraction of a second – all of this rocketed around my head, and I realised I had made the greatest mistake of my life.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“Marriage changed me. As it should. I signed myself up for a partnership.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“He spent ten minutes pointing out it was a miracle she was even going out with me. ‘Simon,’ he added at the end, ‘everyone should try to marry someone nicer than themselves.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“I cannot claim what we film will make a huge difference to your lives,’ I said. ‘It is just a ripple on a lake.’ It was the first time I used a line that I have said repeatedly in the years since. I don’t want people to think their lives are going to be transformed by our presence. It is rare that television makes a sudden, profound change, even though I do still believe it enlightens, even educates. But I have to be honest with them. I would never want to force anyone to film with us.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“I was reminded of an African proverb: when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“Humans are just so damn complicated.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“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.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places: By the presenter of BBC TV's WILDERNESS

“Their lesson was simple: our lives are nothing without our past, without our history, without our culture, without our culture and old stones. It all matters, because it gives meaning.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places

“My highs are possibly too high, just as my lows are probably too low. Yet I want to be affected by places and people and life and grief. That's the privilege of experiences. I want to be moved and touched and emotional. That's what makes me feel alive. That's why I adore adventures and need to travel.”
― Simon Reeve, Journeys to Impossible Places