Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field-but they're all we have. - Yann Martel

If you take two steps towards God,' he used to tell me, 'God runs to you!

As for fame, fame felt like nothing. Fame was not a sensation like love or hunger or loneliness, welling from within and invisible to the outside eye. It was rather entirely external, coming from the minds of others. It existed in the way people looked at him or behaved towards him. In that, being famous was no different from being gay, or Jewish, or from a visible minority: you are who you are, and then people project onto you some notion they have.

Some of us give up[…] 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.