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7e0feff
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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." Page 316"
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Yann Martel |
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d2477b7
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A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.
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life-of-pi
philosophy-of-life
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Yann Martel |
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fe516e4
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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.
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Yann Martel |
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5daf660
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If you take two steps towards God,' he used to tell me, 'God runs to you!
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religion
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Yann Martel |
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43886e9
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Blessed be shock. Blessed be the part of us that protects us from too much pain and sorrow. At the heart of life is a fusebox.
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Yann Martel |
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45f5128
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It's not atheists who get stuck in my caw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for awhile. We all must pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we... But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as means of transportation.
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doubt
atheists
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Yann Martel |
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699dc6f
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science can only take you so far and then you have to leap
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Yann Martel |
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b54ef3a
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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.
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Yann Martel |
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e06a5a2
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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, 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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Yann Martel |
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939831a
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For the first time I noticed - as I would notice repeatedly during my ordeal, between one throe of agony and the next - that my suffering was taking place in a grand setting. I saw my suffering for what it was, finite and insignificant, and I was still. My suffering did not fit anywhere, I realized. And I could accept this. It was all right.
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Yann Martel |
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591c4c8
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The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.
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Yann Martel |
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6d662e0
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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.
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Yann Martel |
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4a24234
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Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love--but sometimes it was so hard to love. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up.
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god
love
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Yann Martel |
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f56716a
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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.
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Yann Martel |
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4ec8ddf
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Bapu Gandhi said, 'All religions are true.' I just want to love God.
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religions
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Yann Martel |
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c2d1c86
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Christianity is a religion in a rush. Look at the world created in seven days. Even on a symbolic level, that's creation in a frenzy. To one born in a religion where the battle for a single soul can be a relay race run over many centuries, with innumerable generations passing along the baton, the quick resolution of Christianity has a dizzying effect. If Hinduism flows placidly like the Ganges, then Christianity bustles like Toronto at rush..
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Yann Martel |
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d214675
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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 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 ..
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Yann Martel |
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3336d84
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Christianity is a religion in a rush.
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religion
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Yann Martel |
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cf5aa6b
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Progress is unstoppable. It is a drumbeat to which we must all march. Technology helps and good ideas spread - these are two lows of nature. If you don't let technology help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaurhood! I am utterly convinced of this.
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Yann Martel |
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73fc166
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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.
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Yann Martel |
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e35b278
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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.
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Yann Martel |
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128cc30
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Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans." Yann Martel in Life of Pi, Page 25"
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Yann Martel |
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bffa174
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I was weeping because Richard Parker had left me so unceremoniously. What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell...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
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Yann Martel |
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bf01e47
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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.
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Yann Martel |
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627219c
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When I corrected her, I told her that 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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09c2f19
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Religion is more than rite and ritual.
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rite
ritual
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Yann Martel |
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314b583
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So you want another story?" Uhh... no. We would like to know what really happened." Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?" Uhh... perhaps in English. In Japanese a story would have an element of invention in it. We don't want any invention. We want the 'straight facts,' as you say in English." Isn't telling about something--using words, English or Japanese--already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this wo..
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Yann Martel |
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eb3f358
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Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time." Page 212."
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Yann Martel |
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768780a
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To my mind, faith is like being in the sun. When you are in the sun, can you avoid creating a shadow? Can you shake that area of darkness that clings to you, always shaped like you, as if constantly to remind you of yourself? You can't. This shadow is doubt. And it goes wherever you go as long as you stay in the sun. And who wouldn't want to be in the sun?
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Yann Martel |
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2ab16d4
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Afterwards, when it's all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?
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god
human-suffering
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Yann Martel |
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97cd109
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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.
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Yann Martel |
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f19326b
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The main battlefield of good is not the open ground of the publis arena, but the small clearing of each heart.
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Yann Martel |
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fedc295
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It's a misery peculiar to would-be writers. Your theme is good, as are your sentences. Your characters are so ruddy with life they practically need birth certificates. The plot you've mapped out for them is grand, simple and gripping. You've done your research, gathering the facts; historical, social, climatic culinary, that will give your story its feel of authenticity. The dialogue zips along, crackling with tension. The descriptions burs..
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Yann Martel |
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1a426c1
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Some of us give up on life with only a resigned sigh. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others-and I am one of those-never give up. 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.
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Yann Martel |
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51eaa6d
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I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.
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life
fearless
fearlessness
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Yann Martel |
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8d8faa1
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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 arms of each and every girl. But the moment the girls become possessive,..
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Yann Martel |
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513ce34
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The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other. The sea is without a wrinkle. There is not a whisper of wind. The hours last forever. You are so bored you sink into a state of apathy close to a coma. Then the sea becomes rough and your emotions are whipped into a frenzy. Yet even these two opposites do not remain distinct. In your boredom there are elements of terror: you bre..
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Yann Martel |
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ef04cce
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I have a story that will make you believe in God.
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Yann Martel |
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df05cf8
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I would have liked to say, "I'm a doctor," to those who asked me what I did, doctors being the current purveyors of magic and miracle. But I'm sure we would have had a bus accident around the next bend, and with all eyes fixed on me I would have to explain, amidst the crying and moaning of victims...I would have to confess that as a matter of fact it was a bachelor's in philosophy; next, to the shouts of what meaning such a bloody tragedy c..
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Yann Martel |
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cca9a93
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If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?
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Yann Martel |
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ba13920
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If you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside down and shook it you would be amazed at the animals that fall out: badgers, wolves, boa constrictors, crocodiles, ostriches, baboons, capybaras, wild boars, leopards, manatees, ruminants, in untold numbers. There is no doubt in my mind that that feral giraffes and feral hippos have been living in Tokyo for generations without seeing a soul.
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peter-parker
yann-martel
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Yann Martel |
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a15e93e
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Religion?" Mr Kumar grinned broadly. "I don't believe in religion. Religion is darkness."
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religion
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Yann Martel |
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5f15b9d
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Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field-but they're all we have.
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Yann Martel |
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caebcc3
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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 ..
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religion
krishna
hinduism
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Yann Martel |