“My alarm clock during my childhood was a pride of lions.”

“For the first time I noticed - as I would notice repeatedly during my ordeal, between one throe of agony and the next - that my suffering was taking place in a grand setting. I saw my suffering for what it was, finite and insignificant, and I was still. My suffering did not fit anywhere, I realized. And I could accept this. It was all right.”

“...if you fall into a lion's pit, the reason the lion will tear you to pieces is not because it's hungry-be assured, zoo animals are amply fed-or because it's bloodthirsty, but because you've invaded it's territory.”

“In my youth, it was my good luck to have a few good teachers, men and women, who came into my head and lit a match.”

“The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. A good-natured smile is forever on its lips...I have seen that smile with my own eyes. I am not one given to projecting human traits and emotions onto animals, but many a time during that month in Brazil, looking up at a sloth in repose, I felt I was in the presence of upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer, wise beings whose intense imaginative lives were beyond the reach of scientific probing.”

“My life is like a memento more painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.”

“My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.”