The Alchemist

“I’m alive. When I’m eating that’s all I think about. If I’m on the march, I just concentrate on marching. If I have to fight, it will be just as good a day as any to die. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life is the moment we are living now.”

Life of Pi

“I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always … so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”