Yann Martel Quotes
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I preferred to set off and perish in search of my own kind than to live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and spiritual death on this murderous island.
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Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror.
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I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.
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There is nothing more satisfying than having a sentence fall into place in a way you feel is right, and then adding another one and then another one. It's extraordinarily satisfying.
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I love cinema. I think the risk of the aesthetics being fixed is compensated by other advantages. Cinema is visually powerful, it is a complete experience, reaches different audience. It's something I really like. I like movies.
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All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.
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Books are something social - a writer speaking to a reader - so I think making the reading of a book the center of a social event, the meeting of a book club, is a brilliant idea.
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I've never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart. I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. The pain is like an axe that chops my heart.
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Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love - but sometimes it was so hard to love.
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It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.
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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.
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Gloom is but a shadow of a cloud passing by
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What works in a story is very different than what works in cinema. For example, dialogue in books: If you translate it too faithfully, it sounds a little stilted, because we often don't speak the way we speak in novels. Oral language is much punchier, shorter sentences.
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You bring joy and pain in equal measure. Joy because you are with me, but pain because it wont be for long.
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It was a huge zoo, spread over numberless acres, big enough to require a train to explore it, though it seemed to get smaler as I grew older, train included. Now it's so small it fits in my head.
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The three religions because I wanted to discuss faith, not organized religion, so wanted to relativize organized religion by having Pi practice three. I would have like PI to be a Jew, too, to practice Judaism, but there are two religions that are explicitly incompatible: Christianity and Judaism. Where one begins, the other ends, according to Christians, and where one endures, the other strays, according to Jews.
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It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.
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Much hostile and aggressive behaviour among animals is the expression of social insecurity.
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If you don't have dreams, how do you maneuver reality? Where do you get the ideas to change reality if not from dreams?
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And in between the two, in between the sky and the sea, were all the winds. And there were all the nights and all the moons. To be a castaway is to be a point perpetually at the centre of a circle. However much things may appear to change-the sea may shift from whisper to rage, the sky might go from fresh blue to blinding white to darkest black-the geometry never changes. Your gaze is always a radius. The circumference is ever great. In fact, the circles multiply. To be a castaway is to be caught in a harrowing ballet of circles.
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I explore it now in the only place left for it, my memory.
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When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.
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Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food is low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured.
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I turned around, stepped over the Zebra and threw myself overboard.
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So you want another story?" Uhh... no. We would like to know what really happened." Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?" Uhh... perhaps in English. In Japanese a story would have an element of invention in it. We don't want any invention. We want the 'straight facts,' as you say in English." Isn't telling about something--using words, English or Japanese--already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention?
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The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity – it’s envy.
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I love Canada...It is a great country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos.
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Christianity is a religion in a rush.
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But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste of death forever in his mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? -- Love. That was his answer.
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Fanatics do not have faith - they have belief. With faith you let go. You trust. Whereas with belief you cling.
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