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e05f9eb
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Now he realized that this matter of faith was either radically to be taken seriously or radically not to be taken seriously. He stared at the crucifix, balancing between utter belief and utter disbelief.
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Yann Martel |
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d8b10e9
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But I learned at my expense that Father believed there was another animal even more dangerous than us, and one that was extremely common, too, found on every continent, in every habitat: the redoubtable species Animalus anthropomorphicus, the animal as seen through human eyes. We've all met one, perhaps even owned one. It is an animal that is "cute", "friendly", "loving", "devoted", "merry", "understanding". These animals lie in ambush in e..
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zoology
anthropomorphism
theologians
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Yann Martel |
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c606054
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Father raised his hands. "Gentlemen, gentlemen,please!" he interjected. "I would like to remind you there is freedom of practice in this country." Three apoplectic faces turned to him. "Yes! Prac --singular!" the wise men screa,ed in unison. Three index fingers, like punctuation marks, jumped to attention in the air to emphasize their point."
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Yann Martel |
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ddba933
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You've got the wrong fellow. You may not believe in life, but I don't believe in death. Move on!
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Yann Martel |
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bb4efb7
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Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims.
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Yann Martel |
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9be242e
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Without your sheep, you would have no livelihood, you would die. This dependency creates a sort of equality, doesn't it? Not individually, but collectively. As a group, you and your sheep are at opposite sides of a seesaw, and somewhere in between there is a fulcrum. You must maintain the balance. In that sense, we are no better than they.
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veganism
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Yann Martel |
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673cedc
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shelf, stand mountains of neatly stacked cans and packages. A reserve of food to last the siege of Leningrad. CHAPTER 7 It was my luck to have a few good teachers in my youth, men and women who came into my dark head and lit a match.
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Yann Martel |
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59805c2
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She looked beautiful. And sad. For she was leaving India, India of the heat and monsoons, of rice fields and the Cauvery River, of coastlines and stone temples, of bullock carts and colourful trucks, of friends and known shopkeepers, of Nehru Street and Goubert Salai, of this and that, India so familiar to her and loved by her.
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Yann Martel |
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70d87d7
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With questions that are orders
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Yann Martel |
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dba0ec8
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And what a story. The first thing that drew me in was disbelief. What? Humanity sins but it's God's Son who pays the price? I tried to imagine Father saying to me, 'Piscine, a lion slipped into the llama pen today and killed two llamas. Yesterday another one killed a black buck. Last week two of them ate a camel. The situation has become intolerable. Something must be done. I have decided that the only way the lions can atone for their sins..
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Yann Martel |
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28d5d6e
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But we should not cling! A plague upon fundamentalists and literalists! I am reminded of a story of Lord Krishna when he was a cowherd. Every night he invites the milkmaids to dance with him in the forest. They come and they dance. The night is dark, the fire in their midst roars and crackles, the beat of the music gets ever faster--the girls dance and dance and dance with their sweet lord, who has made himself so abundant as to be in the a..
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Yann Martel |
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03f005e
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many people seem to lose God along life's way.
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Yann Martel |
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0785f8e
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I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, show no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind l..
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fear
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Yann Martel |
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11dc7c3
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Tomas shudders. He lifts his head. A breeze is blowing. In whatever direction he looks, there is majestic normalcy: wild growth here, tilled fields over there, the road, the sky, the sun. Everything is in its place, and time is moving with its usual discretion. Then, in an instant, without any warning, a little boy tripped everything up. Surely the fields will notice; they will rise, dust themselves, and come closer to take a concerned look..
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Yann Martel |
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00d0182
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We loved our son like the sea loves an island, always surrounding him with our arms, always touching him and crashing upon his shore with our care and concern. When he was gone, the sea had only itself to contemplate.
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Yann Martel |
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23be0cc
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I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins with your mind, always.
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Yann Martel |
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d0ba922
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So I flew to Bombay. This is not so illogical if you realize three things: that a stint in India will beat the restlessness out of any living creature; that a little money can go a long way there; and that a novel set in Portugal in 1939 may have very little to do with Portugal in 1939. I
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Yann Martel |
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be16376
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Grief is a disease. We were riddled with its pockmarks, tormented by its fevers, broken by its blows. It ate at us like maggots, attacked us like lice--we scratched ourselves to the edge of madness. In the process we became as withered as crickets, as tired as old dogs.
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Yann Martel |
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b15cc99
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Thus set up, pen in hand, for the sake of greater truth, I would turn Portugal into a fiction. That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence? What need did I have to go to Portugal? The
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Yann Martel |
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44f1492
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Time became distance for me in the way it is for all mortals
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Yann Martel |
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7b52867
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The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. "A good-natured smile is forever on its lips," reported Tirler (1966). I have seen that smile with my own eyes. I am not one given to projecting human traits and emotions onto animals, but many a time during that month in Brazil, looking up at sloths in repose, I felt I was in the presence of upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep i..
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Yann Martel |
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cbf65af
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Do you see the invisible spirals on the margins of the page? I thought I would run out of paper. It was the pens that ran out
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Yann Martel |
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d2688d2
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You speak with warm marbles in your mouth. You have an Indian accent
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Yann Martel |
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832d876
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To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures to people the tree of your life and give it new branches. To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It is like losing-..
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Yann Martel |
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07e17a4
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It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like
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Yann Martel |
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0d3ac19
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I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear ..
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Yann Martel |
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850560c
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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. I
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Yann Martel |
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c040881
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It fell into my cup with a clink, and no doubt I will be considered to have abandoned the last vestiges of humanness by those who do not understand the degree of my suffering when I say that it sounded to my ears like the music of a five-rupee coin dropped into a beggar's cup. A
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Yann Martel |
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7e0ba9e
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Henry had written a novel because there was a hole in him that needed filling, a question that needed answering, a patch of canvas that needed painting--that blend of anxiety, curiosity and joy that is at the origin of art--and he had filled the hole, answered the question, splashed colour on the canvas, all done for himself, because he had to. Then complete strangers told him that his book had filled a hole in them, had answered a question..
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Yann Martel |
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c9fe9c5
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If it happened, it happened. Why should it have to mean anything?
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Yann Martel |
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827d19d
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My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition. I mock this skull. I look at it and I say, "You've got the wrong fellow. You may not believe in life, but I don't believe in death. Move on!" The skull snickers and moves ever closer, but that doesn't surprise me. The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity--it's envy. ..
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Yann Martel |
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82c756e
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Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long, and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger.
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Yann Martel |
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0cce51f
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The reward for the watching eye and the listening ear is great. 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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Yann Martel |
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85d023e
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Trees were not hard, irritable things, but discreetly orgasmic beings moaning at a level too deep for our brutish ears. And flowers were quick explosive orgasms, like making love in the shower.
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nature
orgasm
sexual
trees
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Yann Martel |
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7be37fb
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onanists breaking a sweat on monkeys, ponies, birds;
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Yann Martel |
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9b424d4
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Stories identify, unify, give meaning to. Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.
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Yann Martel |
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dfa4b45
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English's drive to exploit the new and the alien, its zeal in robbing words from other languages, its incapacity to feel qualms over the matter, its museum-size overabundance of vocabulary, its shoulder-shrug approach to spelling, its don't-worry-be-happy concern for grammar--the result was a language whose colour and wealth Henry loved.
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Yann Martel |
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4739c5d
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How true it is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.
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Yann Martel |
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0a25746
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for, of course, with all animals, including us, to stare is an aggressive act.
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Yann Martel |
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7875585
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Agama bukan sekadar ritual dan tata cara. Ada makna di balik ritual dan tata cara itu.
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religion
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Yann Martel |
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6b71d92
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I kept one eye on the horizon, one eye on the other end of the lifeboat.
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Yann Martel |
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aec6197
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To her, writing is making stock and reading is sipping broth, but only the spoken word is the full roasted chicken.
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writing
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Yann Martel |
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e84d275
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I began to wait. My thoughts swung wildly. I was either fixed on practical details of immediate survival or transfixed by pain, weeping silently, my mouth open and my hands on my head.
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Yann Martel |
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ecb9a0e
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Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.
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Yann Martel |