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
Words Like Freedom There are words like Freedom Sweet and wonderful to say. On my heartstrings freedom sings All day everyday. There are words like Liberty That almost make me cry. If you had known what I know You would know why.
Langston HughesRead
I became a better listener than I ever had been as a result of playing Jean Luc Picard because it was one of the things that he does terrifically well.
Patrick StewartRead
People only see what they are prepared to see. If you look for what is good and what you can be grateful for you will find it everywhere.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
Even a correct decision is wrong when it was taken too late.
Lee IacoccaRead
It is true that I do not speak as well as I can think. But that is true of most people, as nearly as I can tell.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Learn to get from the day. Not just get through it, get from it. Soak it up. Each day is a piece of the mosaic of your life.
Jim RohnRead