“To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures who people the tree of your life and give it new branches.”
"You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better."
- Yann Martel
Hope
"Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea as Mr. Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger."
- Yann Martel
Courage
"To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches."
- Yann Martel
Adversity
"The men nodded vigorously at me. When they took hold of me and lifted me in their strong arms, I thought nothing of it. I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts."
- Yann Martel
Adversity
"There's no peace like the peace of an inner courtyard on a sunny day."
- Yann Martel
Inner Peace
"Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful."
- Joshua J. Marine
Adversity
"The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it."
- Epicurus
Adversity
"It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Adversity
"The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that’s where it’s at."
- Jesse Owens
Adversity
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress."
- Frederick Douglass
Adversity