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d39725d
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I don't believe in religion. Religion is darkness.
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Yann Martel |
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2b5ab82
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The moon distresses you by silently reminding you of your solitude; you open your eyes wide to escape your loneliness.
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Yann Martel |
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2736175
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No greatness without goodness.
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Yann Martel |
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431df86
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We fight and fight and fight. We fight no matter the cost of battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the very end. It's not a question of courage. It's something constitutional, an inability to let go. It maybe nothing more than life-hungry stupidity.
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Yann Martel |
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0965621
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The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity - it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it...
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Yann Martel |
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115a2bf
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I was convinced that they understood my condition, that at the sight of me one of them exclaimed, "Oh! It's that castaway with the pussy cat Bamphoo was telling me about. Poor boy. Hope he has enough plankton. I must tell Mumphoo and Tomphoo and Stimphoo about him. I wonder if there isn't a ship around I could alert. His mother would be very happy to see him again. Goodbye, my boy. I'll try to help. My name's Pimphoo." And so, through the g..
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Yann Martel |
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5caf379
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Animals that escape go from the known into the unknown - and if there is one thing an animal hates above all else, it is the unknown. Escaping animals usually hind in the very first place they find that gives them a sense of security, and they are dangerous only to those who happen to get between them and their reckoned safe spot.
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Yann Martel |
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fd873b0
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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. That
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Yann Martel |
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e1e862a
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You can keep your sweaty, chatty Son to yourself.
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Yann Martel |
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65baeb0
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communion with God in the middle of bags of flour
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Yann Martel |
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a4a5f11
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ineluctably.
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Yann Martel |
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cb2b4d6
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Look: Christ on the Cross died of suffocation, but His only complaint was of thirst. If thirst can be so taxing that even God Incarnate complains about it, imagine the effect on a regular human. It
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Yann Martel |
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feeafc4
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Hediger (1950) mantiene que <>.
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Yann Martel |
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ad53a2b
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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
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Yann Martel |
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4c726e7
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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.
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Yann Martel |
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b6505c0
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They were like curmudgeonly old friends who would never admit that they liked me yet came round to see me all the time. The
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Yann Martel |
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b0385a8
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I knew very little about the religion. [Christianity] It had a reputation for few gods and great violence. But good schools.
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Yann Martel |
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40f0258
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I can well imagine that somewhere far off, 150 miles away, a ship's watch looked up, startled, and later reported the oddest thing, that he thought he heard a cat's meow coming from three o'clock. Days
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Yann Martel |
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7d1e447
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Readers walked away, their faces lit up because they'd met him, while his was lit up because he'd met them. 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, beca..
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Yann Martel |
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dfeffc2
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When the final moment came, signalled to him by the dramatic stoppage of her loud, rasping breathing (whereas their son had departed so quietly, like the petals of a flower falling off), he felt like a sheet of ice being rushed along a river.
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Yann Martel |
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c2519f7
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There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, "Business as usual." But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mighti..
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Yann Martel |
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fd81627
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Come aboard if your destination is oblivion--it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat, if you want. But it's a sad view. Oh,
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Yann Martel |
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8fbfcce
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Uvek ima onih koji uzmu za pravo da brane Boga, kao da je Poslednja stvarnost, kao da je temeljni ram postojanja nesto slabasno i bespomocno. Takvi prolaze pored udovice - prosjakinje unakazene gubom, prolaze pored dece odevene u rite koja zive na ulici, i misle: ,,Posao kao i obicno". Ali ako cuju da neko omalovazava Boga, onda je to druga prica. Zajapure se u licu, dahcu i bljuju srdite reci. Stepen njihovog ogorcenja zapanjujuci ..
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Yann Martel |
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4168baa
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It's a big ocean crossed by busy ships. I went slowly, observing much.
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Yann Martel |
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842e465
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Because to suffer and do nothing is to be nothing, while to suffer and do something is to become someone. And that is what he is doing: becoming someone.
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Yann Martel |
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ea7317a
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But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.
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Yann Martel |
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7cb8fb8
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Le dije que me gustaba la comida picante. No se por que tuve que afirmar semejante idiotez si es mentira. Voy poniendo cucharada tras cucharada de yogur en la comida. No hay nada que hacer. Cada vez me pasa igual: las papilas gustativas se me achicharran y se mueren; el rostro se me pone rojo como una remolacha; mi cabeza se me antoja una casa en llamas y el tracto digestivo empieza a retorcerse y quejarse de dolor como una boa constrictor ..
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Yann Martel |
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51c4610
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can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.
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Yann Martel |
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9bc6b7b
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Things didn't turn out the way they were supposed to, but what can you do? You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.
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Yann Martel |
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8b1441b
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zooparkis shesaxeb imdenive absurduli azri momismenia, ramdenic` g'mert`isa da religiis shesaxeb. uamravi ket`ilis mosurne, magram sak`meshi ch`auxedavi adamiani miich`nevs, rom c`xovelebi velur samqaroshi up`ro ,,bednierad" c`xovroben, radgan ik`aa t`avisup`leba. itqvian amas da t`valcin carmoudgebat` zorba da axovani tanis, simpat`iuri mtac`eblebi, vt`k`vat`, lomi an leopardi (radgan gnu an milkbila, aba, ra mosaconia?!). carmoidgenen, t`..
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Yann Martel |
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ec1431d
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In the wild, animals stick to the same paths for the same pressing reasons, season after season.
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Yann Martel |
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6a825f7
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Within the limits of their nature, they make do with what they have.
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Yann Martel |
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66e78d5
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And where in the automobile is the offal that so offends with the horse? There is none, only a puff of smoke that vanishes in the air. An automobile is as harmless as a cigarette. Mark my words, Tomas: This century will be remembered as the century of the puff of smoke!
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Yann Martel |
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815392e
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On occasion we say to ourselves, panting, 'Gosh, life is racing by.' But that's not it at all, it's the contrary: life is still. It is we who are racing by.
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Yann Martel |
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9bda983
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Art is water, and just as humans are always close to water, for reasons of necessity (to drink, to wash, to flush away, to grow) as well as for reasons of pleasure (to play in, to swim in, to relax in front of, to sail upon, to suck on frozen, coloured and sweetened), so humans must always be close to art in all its incarnations, from the frivolous to the essential. Otherwise we dry up.
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Yann Martel |
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8f48051
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That is the greatness of literature, and its paradox, that in reading about fictional others we end up reading about ourselves. Sometimes this unwitting self-examination provokes smiles of recognition, while other times, . . . it provokes shudders of worry and denial. Either way, we are the wiser, we are existentially thicker.
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Yann Martel |
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3fd2fb3
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We're all busy. Meditating monks in their cells are busy. That's adult life, filled to the ceiling with things that need doing. (It seems only children and the elderly aren't plagued by lack of time--and notice how they enjoy their books, how their lives fill their eyes.) But every person has a space next to where they sleep, whether a patch of pavement or a fine bedside table. In that space, at night, a book can glow. And in those moments ..
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Yann Martel |
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3fcdba5
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Except that now, for having accused Ravi of an unspecified crime he hadn't committed, I was as good as dead. In years subsequent, when he was in the mood to terrorize me, he would whisper to me, "Just wait till we're alone. You're the next goat!"
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Yann Martel |
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a1120ff
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Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.
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quotes-on-life
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Yann Martel |
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854a86a
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to shriek and to slam the door shut repeatedly--with a deafening clang each time--until the keeper, notified by a visitor, hurried over to remedy the situation. A herd of roe-deer in a European zoo stepped out of their corral when the gate was left open. Frightened by visitors, the deer bolted for the nearby forest, which had its own herd of wild roe-deer and could support more. Nonetheless,
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Yann Martel |
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e1237e3
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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 low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured. What
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Yann Martel |
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1ff8e37
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I can well imagine an atheist's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!"--and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story."
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Yann Martel |
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fb0af12
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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.
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Yann Martel |
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304cc70
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proves to be a devastating hunter. Hyenas attack
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Yann Martel |