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227de97
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Hungry, tired, eyes sore, dying to pee, I would sit and take in every conceivable kind of movie. The only criterion for being shown at Canadian Images was that a movie be Canadian. It
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Yann Martel |
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4ead285
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The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? (p. 302)
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Yann Martel |
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5821947
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in fact she was not so wrong; that 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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179a9e9
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can.
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Yann Martel |
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d085b7d
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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
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Yann Martel |
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3b73261
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Cuesta creer que existe el amor, si no pregunteselo a cualquier amante. Cuesta creer que existe la vida, si no pregunteselo a cualquier cientifico. Cuesta creer que existe Dios, si no pregunteselo a cualquier creyente. ?Que problema tienen con lo que cuesta creer?
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Yann Martel |
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0b08daa
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First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first. I
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Yann Martel |
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ff3b579
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At one point I turned to the French language, which gave me the gender of all things. But to no satisfaction. I would readily agree that trucks and murders were masculine while bicycles and life were feminine. But how odd that a breast was masculine. And it made little sense that garbage was feminine while perfume was masculine -- and no sense at all that television, which I would have deemed repellently masculine, was in fact feminine. Whe..
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Yann Martel |
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fcb9ad6
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I would return home to la maison, feminine where, as likely as not, I would go to my room, la chambre, where I would settle to read un livre masculine, until supper. During the masculine meal, feminine food would be eaten. After my hard, productive masculine day, I would rest during the feminine night. At one time, for a few days, I even took an affected aversion to being in the kitchen, la cuisine.
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Yann Martel |
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3a2d000
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If a friend of mine in Paris had confessed that he was in love with a Simon or a Peter, I would have compared notes with him on my love for Mary Ann. Gender in matters of love struck me as of no greater consequence than flavours in ice-cream. I imagine the absence of religion in my upbringing was one factor that had allowed this belief to survive. Perhaps, too, I had a natural openness in the matter. At any rate, it was completely unwitting..
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Yann Martel |
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61909c9
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Change becomes a habit and habits are hard to change. I
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Yann Martel |
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e8ad18f
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tiptoe to the water's edge. They show their raiments.
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Yann Martel |
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8eb2dce
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If you went to a home, kicked down the front door, chased the people who lived there out into the street and said, "Go! You are free! Free as a bird! Go! Go!"--do you think they would shout and dance for joy? They wouldn't. Birds are not free. The people you've"
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Yann Martel |
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4c60698
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cannot think of a better way to spread the faith. No thundering from a pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book of scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little girl's kiss on your cheek. At
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Yann Martel |
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e3063a9
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Cuando has sufrido mucho en la vida, cada dolor adicional es tan tolerable como insignificante.
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Yann Martel |
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725b291
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to be drunk on alcohol is disgraceful, but to be drunk on water is noble and ecstatic.
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Yann Martel |
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3eae115
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He became a champion napper.
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Yann Martel |
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56b4480
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We came to the zebras. Mr. Kumar had never heard of such creatures, let alone seen one. He was dumbfounded. "They're called zebras," I said. "Have they been painted with a brush?" "No, no. They look like that naturally." "What happens when it rains?" "Nothing." "The stripes don't melt?" "No."
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Yann Martel |
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698289d
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artist,
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Yann Martel |
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2b057a9
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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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daf9849
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The sun was beginning to pull the curtains on the day.
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Yann Martel |
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c55a6d7
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The boundaries are not to be blurred. I was sent off, struck by his harshest thunderbolt, excommunication. In his eyes I am no longer a man of the cloth. But I yet feel the Lord's hand holding me up.
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Yann Martel |
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70884c5
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He often repeated something Father Abrahan said to him once, how faith is ever young, how faith, unlike the rest of us, does not age.
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Yann Martel |
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e9e044e
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When animals fight, it is with the intent to kill and with the understanding that they may be killed.
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Yann Martel |
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be201aa
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hole. The temperature climbed.
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Yann Martel |
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7bbd24d
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Lakshmi, goddess of wealth,
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Yann Martel |
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1ea0abe
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Scegliere il dubbio come filosofia di vita equivale ad eleggere l'immobilita a proprio mezzo di trasporto.
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Yann Martel |
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22588bd
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Khorata se preselvat, zashchoto sa iztoshcheni ot bezpokoistvo. Zaradi raziazhdashchoto chuvstvo, che kolkoto i da rabotiat, usiliiata im niama da b'dat v'znagradeni, che tova, koeto shche izgradiat za godina, drugi shche razrushat za den. Zaradi useshchaneto, che b'deshche niama, che te mozhe da otseleiat, no ne i detsata im. Zaradi s'mnenieto im, che nishcho niama da se promeni, che shchastieto i blagopoluchieto sa v'zmozhni samo drugade.
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Yann Martel |
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8199836
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I was alone and orphaned, in the middle of the Pacific, hanging on to an oar, an adult tiger in front of me, sharks beneath me, a storm raging about me.
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Yann Martel |
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ecb6caf
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If you take two steps towards God," he used to tell me, "God runs to you!"
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Yann Martel |
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1a2eca7
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Love is a house with many rooms, this room to feed the love, this one to entertain it, this one to clean it, this one to dress it, this one to allow it to rest, and each of these rooms can also just as well also be the room for laughing or the room for listening or the room for telling one's secrets or the room for sulking or the room for apologizing or the room for intimate togetherness...
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Yann Martel |
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52c2b7b
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people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. 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.
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Yann Martel |
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f521f1d
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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 becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.
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Yann Martel |
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db41e30
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Her fear was something useless that only hampered her.
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Yann Martel |
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d3ba360
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if it weren't for this hyena, the sailors wouldn't have thrown me into the lifeboat and I would have stayed on the ship and I surely would have drowned; and if I had to share quarters with a wild animal, better the upfront ferocity of a dog than the power and stealth of a cat.
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Yann Martel |
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31d0489
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The multitude of the curious and the offended descends upon him.
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curious
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Yann Martel |
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6032242
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HIs life was always a happenstance.
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Yann Martel |
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5049034
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As far as he can tell, that's what Odo spends most of his time doing: being in time, like one sits by the river, watching the water go by. It's a lesson hard learned, just to sit there and be.
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time
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Yann Martel |
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494d347
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There are those who take upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless,
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Yann Martel |
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10be917
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I underestimated her. I under-estimated her grit. She
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Yann Martel |
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54c8416
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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. Whatever the reason for wanting to escape, sane or insane, zoo detractors should realize that animals don't escape to somewhere but from something. Something within their territory has frightened them--the intrusion of an enemy..
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Yann Martel |
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0b5d690
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Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they've known for a great unknown beyond the horizon? Why climb this Mount Everest of formalities that makes you feel like a beggar? Why enter this jungle of foreignness where everything is new, strange and difficult? The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life.
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Yann Martel |
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829628b
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But religion is more than rite and ritual. There is what the rite and ritual stand for.
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Yann Martel |
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951ed8c
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Listen my darling, if you're going to be religious, you must either be a Hindu, a Christian, or a Muslim...' 'I don't understand why I can't be all three. Mamaji has two passports. He's Indian and French. Why can't I be a Hindu, a Christian, and a Muslim?' 'That's different. France and India are nations on earth.' 'How many nations are there in the sky?' She thought for a second. 'One. That's the point. One nation, one passport.' 'One natio..
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Yann Martel |