Saroo Brierley Quotes

I was about to embark on a high-tech version of what I'd done in my first week there, twenty years ago, randomly taking trains out to see if they went back home. I took a deep breath, chose a train line, and started scrolling along it.

was a juvenile detention centre, called Liluah, housing

We all reach a point as young adults when we wonder what we should be doing with our lives - or, at the very least, which direction to point ourselves in. Beyond the means to get by, we need to think about what's most important to us. Not surprisingly, I discovered that for me the answer was family.

I'd had to learn some of these differences, too. Mum remembers taking me somewhere in the car once when I looked at her and said, "Lady no drive." She pulled over and said, "If lady no drive, then boy walk!" I quickly learned my lesson.

I feel strongly that from my being a little lost boy with no family to becoming a man with two, everything was meant to happen just the way it happened. And I am profoundly humbled by that thought.

My mother described her reactions better than I ever could mine: she said she was "surprised with thunder" that her boy had come back, and that the happiness in her heart was "as deep as the sea".

I'd learned quickly, as a matter of survival, that I needed to take opportunities as they came - if they came - and to look forward to the future.

You can't remain in a state of sheer panic and terror indefinitely, and both had run their course. Ever since, I've thought that must be why we cry: our bodies are coping with something our minds and hearts can't absorb by themselves.

The idea of having possessions took some getting used to.

Not having enough to eat paralyzes you and keeps you living hour by hour instead of thinking about what you would like to accomplish in a day, week, month, or year. Hunger and poverty steal your childhood and take away your innocence and sense of security. But

Mum had decided that there was nothing sacrosanct about families formed only by birth parents. Though brought up Catholic, she and Dad thought the world had enough children born into it already, with many millions of them in dire need. They agreed that there were other ways to create a family beyond having children themselves.

carrying laborer to teacher and manager. It seems a bittersweet result of the family's loss that the remaining children had managed to lift themselves out of poverty.