Yann Martel citations

Page 2

“Je dois dire un mot sur la peur. C'est le seul adversaire réel de la vie. Il n'y a que la peur qui puisse vaincre la vie. C'est une ennemie habile et perfide, et je le sais bien. Elle n'a aucune décence, ne respecte ni lois ni conventions, ne manifeste aucune clémence. Elle attaque votre point le plus faible, qu'elle trouve avec une facilité déconcertante. Elle naît d'abord et invariablement dans votre esprit. Un moment vous vous sentez calme, en plein contrôle, heureux. Puis la peur, déguisée en léger doute, s'immisce dans votre pensée comme un espion. Ce léger doute rencontre l'incrédulité et celle-ci tente de le repousser. Mais l'incrédulité est un simple fantassin. Le doute s'en débarrasse sans se donner de mal. Vous devenez inquiet. La raison vient à votre rescousse. Vous êtes rassuré. La raison dispose de tous les instruments de pointe de la technologie moderne. Mais, à votre surprise et malgré des tactiques supérieures et un nombre impressionnant de victoires, la raison est mise K.- O. Vous sentez que vous vous affaiblissez, que vous hésitez. Votre inquiétude devient frayeur.”

“All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways.”

“Don't you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover.”

“Can there be any happiness greater than the happiness of salvation?”

“My greatest wish -- other than salvation -- was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time.”

“I love Canada… It is a great country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos.”

“Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when they are not preoccupied with science.”

“In my youth, it was my good luck to have a few good teachers, men and women, who came into my head and lit a match.”

“I couldn't get Him out of my head. Still can't. I spent three solid days thinking about Him. The more He bothered me, the less I coul forget Him. And the more I learned about Him, the less I wanted to leave Him.”

“Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they've known for a great unknown beyond the horizon?… The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life.”

“It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion.”

“Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness--how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I've got!”

“I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful.”

“Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher.”

“Why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch?”

“My suffering left me sad and gloomy.”

“There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God… These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside.”

“It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.”

“I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.”

“I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know.”

“We believe what we see.’… What do you do when you’re in the dark?”

“Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.”

“My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.”

“The paths to liberation are numerous, but the bank along the way is always the same, the Bank of Karma, where the liberation account of each of us is credited or debited depending on our actions.”

“Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited.”

“The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar.”

“The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving.”

“When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.”

“… for everything has a trace of the divine in it.”

“High calls low and low calls high. I tell you, if you were in such dire straits as I was, you too would elevate your thoughts. The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar.”