You can't quantify human pain the way you can measure out sugar. Death comes one individual at a time.
Yann MartelRead
Dawn came and matters were worse for it. Because now, emerging from the darkness, I could see, what before I had only felt, the great curtains of rain crashing down on me from towering heights and the waves that threw a path over me and trod me underfoot one after another.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the harsh realities that become apparent when faced with the light of day, contrasting hope with despair.
In this quote, Yann Martel conveys the idea that the arrival of dawn, typically associated with new beginnings and hope, also brings clarity to the darker truths that one might have only felt in the dark. The imagery of rain and waves suggests overwhelming challenges that seem more daunting in the light, highlighting the paradox of gaining awareness while simultaneously confronting intensified struggles.
Themes
DawnDarknessRealityStruggleHopeDespair
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a motivational speech about overcoming challenges.
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
Become the director, producer, choreographer of your own story
Deepak ChopraRead
In the usual progress of things, the necessities of a nation in every stage of its existence will be found at least equal to its resources.
Alexander HamiltonRead
We must be willing to fail and to appreciate the truth that often "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.
M. Scott PeckRead
Western people ask me whether it is a paradox that I am King but support democracy. I have to tell them that in Thailand, the King is the guarantor of democracy.
Bhumibol AdulyadejRead
Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.
Martin LutherRead
I was a westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity. I didn't even know anymore why I was living.
Marjane SatrapiRead