Pi Patel

"You will read all you want about the great ocean, but you never truly know it until you are on it."

"Animals are as much part of this world as we are."

"I wanted to die. It was a natural sentiment in the face of death."

"Lifeboat protocol requires ritual and discipline."

"Prayer is a sign of strength, not weakness."

"I survived by wills and by will alone."

"The sea does not care about human suffering."

"Numbers alone do not interest me."

"I could not get over my fear until I accepted it."

"Every moment of time is precious."

"My loss became my greatest teacher."

"In the face of death, I chose life."

"We are all storytellers at heart."

"To stay alive, I had to not think too much."

"God is in the details and in the larger design."

"I came to understand that the world was my classroom."

"Belief is powerful in its simplicity and complexity."

"The animal inside me was as real as the divine."

"I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye."

"I have nothing to say of my working life, only that God has given me a life, and I must live it."

"The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no?"

"My suffering left me sad and gloomy. Physical uneasiness grieved me. I was a faithful prisoner to my past."

"An animal that deals with a human is touched by humanity in a profound way a human himself would recognize."

"I wanted to see an animal up close. And I got what I wished for, but not in the way I imagined."

"Despair is only the beginning of recovery."

"I do not wish to move on. I wish to rest with Richard Parker."

"Survival is a matter of taking things one day at a time."

"I have other things on my mind. My dead."

"Faith is important to the whole experience. It is by having faith that you are able to endure hardship."

"The sea was angry that day, my friends. But I was calm."