“The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.”

“It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion.”

“I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point or a lion merely turning its head. But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it...I spent more hours than I can count a quiet witness to the highly mannered, manifold expressions of life that grace our planet. It is something so bright, loud, weird and delicate as to stupefy the senses.”

“[T]o be a castaway is to be caught up in grim and exhausting opposites.”

“In my experience, a castaway’s worst mistake is to hope too much and to do too little.”

“Some of us give up on life with only a resigned sigh. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others-and I am one of those-never give up. We fight and fight and fight. We fight no matter the cost of battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the very end. It's not a question of courage. It's something constitutional, an inability to let go.”

“When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.”