Yann Martel Quotes

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“Gloom is but a shadow of a cloud passing by”

“A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real.”

“It's amazing how willpower can build walls.”

“.. the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.”

“Stories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.”

“It was as unbelievable as the moon catching fire.”

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

“Don’t worry about being good…. Aspire to be authentic.”

“It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse." Page 316”

“A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.”

“Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.”

“science can only take you so far and then you have to leap”

“The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.”

“Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away.”

“Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them -- and then they leap.”

“To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity.”

“Christianity is a religion in a rush.”

“The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.”

“I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.”

“Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans." Yann Martel in Life of Pi, Page 25”

“Socially inferior animals are the ones that make the most strenuous, resourceful efforts to get to know their keepers. They prove to be the ones most faithful to them…it is a fact commonly known in the trade.”

“If you are pitched into misery, remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left.”

“Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths.”

“Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time." Page 212.”

“There were many seas. The sea roared like a tiger. The sea whispered in your ear like a friend telling you secrets. The sea clinked like small change in a pocket. The sea thundered like avalanches. The sea hissed like sandpaper working on wood. The sea sounded like someone vomiting. The sea was dead silent.”

“An apple resists being eaten. An apple is not eaten, it is conquered. The crunchiness of a pear is far more appealing. It is giving and fragile. To eat a pear is akin to … kissing.”

“For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.”

“If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?”

“My greatest wish — other than salvation — was to have a book.”

“Here was irrefutable proof that he was using the Holocaust to speak of the extermination of animal life. Doomed creatures that could not speak for themselves were being given the voice of a most articulate people who had been similarly doomed. He was seeing the tragic fate of animals through the tragic fate of Jews. The Holocaust as allegory.”

“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.”

“"Bapu Gandhi said, 'All religions are true.' I just want to love God," I blurted out, and looked down, red in the face.”

“[The taxidermist is] a historian, dealing with an animal's past; the zookeeper is a politician, dealing with an animal's present; and everyone else is a citizen who must decide on that animal's future (…) The indifference of the many, combined with the active hatred of the few, has sealed the fate of animals.”

“It was Richard Parker who calmed me down. It is the irony of this story that the one who scared me witless to start with was the very same who brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even wholeness.”

“Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field.”

“Then Richard Parker, companion of my torment, awful, fierce thing that kept me alive, moved forward and disappeared forever from my life.”