You can't quantify human pain the way you can measure out sugar. Death comes one individual at a time.
Yann MartelRead
In a healthy individual, a broken bone that has healed properly is strongest where it was once broken. You have not lost any life, Henry told himself. You will still get your fair share of years. Yet the quality of his life changed. Once you've been struck by violence, you acquire companions that never leave you entirely: Suspicion, Fear, Anxiety, Despair, Joylessness. The natural smile is taken from you and the natural pleasures you once enjoyed lose their appeal.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Healing can make us stronger, but trauma leaves lasting emotional scars.
This quote reflects on the dual nature of healing from physical and emotional trauma. While a healed injury may be stronger than before, the experience of violence alters one's quality of life, introducing persistent feelings of suspicion and fear that can overshadow joy and natural pleasures. It suggests that while we can recover physically, the emotional impacts of such experiences may linger indefinitely, changing our perception of life.
Themes
HealingTraumaStrengthEmotionsLife Changes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on personal resilience after hardship.
More from Yann Martel
All quotes →Come aboard if your destination is oblivion- it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat if you want. But it's a sad view.
Yann MartelRead
Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths.
Yann MartelRead
The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.
Yann MartelRead
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 MartelRead
Art is a gift: you create and then you give away. How readers receive that gift is their business. If they hate it, that’s their response to it. Others respond by liking it. Either way, that is their interaction with the book, which is no longer mine.
Yann MartelRead
Similar quotes
Bring anger and pride under your feet, _x000D_ turn them into a ladder and climb higher.
RumiRead
My head is bursting with the joy of the unknown. My heart is expanding a thousand fold.
RumiRead
You have a unique body and mind, with a particular history and conditioning. No one can offer you a formula for navigating all situations and all states of mind. Only by listening inwardly in a fresh and open way will you discern at any given time what most serves your healing and freedom.
Tara BrachRead
There's small choice in rotten apples.
William ShakespeareRead
Meditation is not passive sitting in silence. It is sitting in awareness, free from distraction, and realizing the clear understanding that arises from concentration.
Nhat HanhRead
She regarded books as the emblems of secret brotherhood. A man with this sort of library couldn't possibly hurt her.
Milan KunderaRead