Pi Patel

"I love India more than I know how to say."

"Faith is different from dogma."

"I discovered that fear, food, and sleep were my main concerns."

"Survival is not a spiritual discipline. It is a battle."

"A man can get used to anything."

"Life on a lifeboat is a constant negotiation with death."

"I had to keep my mind occupied to stay sane."

"The ocean provides, if you know how to look."

"I needed to see the godly face of every creature."

"The lifeboat became my whole world."

"I learned that suffering is its own form of mathematics."

"Every important thing I have learned came from a animal."

"I counted every day I lived on the lifeboat."

"Choice is a luxury when you are in dire straits."

"It is important to say that I was not born in Pondicherry."

"Belief is a matter of the heart and the soul."

"The sea tested me every single day."

"My God is a god of details and of reason."

"I know stories from another time and place."

"The reason I survived is because I learned to live with uncertainty."

"I had to become an animal to survive with an animal."

"Spirituality was my greatest ally."

"Life is full of such conflicts between desire and ability."

"Which story do you prefer?"

"I learned that every creature has a purpose in life."

"The hardest part was accepting my new reality."

"My father taught me respect for all living things."

"Time moves differently when you are alone with the sea."

"I have nothing to say of my childhood except that it was unhappy."

"Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane."