Pain is that last quarter of a mile. You feel it, but when you’re through racing, your whole body just feels elated. So the pain is worth it.

Yet a part of you still believes you can fight and survive no matter what your mind knows. It's not so strange. Where there's still life, there's still hope. What happens is up to God.

However dark the night, however dim our hopes, the light will always follow darkness.

To persevere, I think, is important for everybody. Don't give up, don't give in. There's always an answer to everything.

People say, on the raft, you must have hallucinated. Baloney. We were sharper after 47 days than the day we started because our minds were empty of all the war and contamination; we had clean minds to fill with good thoughts. Every day we'd exercise our minds.

I was a rotten kid. My excitement came from seeing what I could get away with.

I've always been called Lucky Louie. It's no mystery why.