The Explorer

But make sure the risks you take aren’t taken to impress someone else.

Look after the things you love, or else you don’t deserve to love anything,

I was afraid that my heart had simply...run out. But it transpires that the heart has its own petrol station, its own coal, it's own soap. It will renew, so use it hugely.

The birds here make the birds in England look like they’re dressed for a job interview.

And what is love at first sight but recognition?

I just liked the idea that there's still things that we don't know. At school, it's the same thing, every day. I liked that it might be all right to believe in large, mad, wild things.

When you get home, tell them how large the world is, and how green. And tell them that the beauty of the world makes demands on you. They will need reminding. If you believe the world is small and tawdry, it is easier to be so yourself. But the world is so tall and so beautiful a place.

People do not tell you that love is so terrifying. It is less like rainbows and butterflies and more like jumping on to the back of a moving dragon.

There's a lot writing about love at first sight. And what is love at first sight but recognition? It's instant knowledge: that this is a person who will make your heart larger - a lover, a child. The same applies to places.

Resist the urge to arrange your fears and angers at their most becoming angles.

He’d intended it to sound reassuring, but instead his voice had landed somewhere between “desperate lying” and “stern aunt on a deathbed.

They went in a new direction, north-west, down a steep incline. Every time their branches burned down to their hands, they pulled new ones from the trees and lit them. Twice, Fred lost his footing and slid until he came up against a tree. Max tripped, ate a mouthful of mud, and they had to pause until his screaming died down enough for him to walk on. Lila tried to comfort him. The explorer turned away and studied a dung beetle with angry intensity.

Sit down, boy!’ said the explorer. ‘All of you. Do you not know what God gave you arses for? Here – drink this.

Look after the things you love or else you don’t deserve to love anything,