I have always believed that the way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers, and that people flourish when they are praise… - Richard Branson

If I had refused to contemplate skydiving, hot-air ballooning or crossing the Atlantic in a boat, I think that my life would have been the duller for it. I never think that I am going to die by accident, but if I were to die then all I can say is that I was wrong, and the hardened realists who kept their feet on the ground were right. But at least I tried.

Everything’s gone,’ I heard someone say. I thought of the lifetime of diaries and photographs disappearing up in smoke and I turned to Mia and Joe. ‘Remember, it’s not material things that matter in life,’ I told them. ‘Things aren’t important, people are. All that matters is that everyone is safe.

how slim the line is between genius and insanity and between determination and stubbornness.