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7018ac8
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What don't we realize is that we are a strange and forbidding species to wild animals. We fill them with fear. They avoid us as much as possible. It took centuries to still the fear in some pliable animals - domestication it's called - but most cannot get over their fear, and I doubt they ever will. When wild animals fight us, it is out of sheer desperation. They fight when they feel they have no other way out.
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Yann Martel |
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39be6c7
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That's the great, enduring challenge of our modern times, is it not, to marry faith and reason? So hard--so unreasonable--to root our lives upon a distant wisp of holiness. Faith is grand but impractical: How does one live an eternal idea in a daily way? It's so much easier to be reasonable. Reason is practical, its rewards are immediate, its workings are clear. But alas, reason is blind. Reason, on its own, leads us nowhere, especially in ..
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Yann Martel |
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85c7be9
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The reward for the watching eye and listening ear is great.
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Yann Martel |
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84eba6a
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If Christ played doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."
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Yann Martel |
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79be7e7
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I must say a word about fear. It's 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.
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Yann Martel |
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4fd5381
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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, jealous possessive love that grabs what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but a passing shadow of a cloud.
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Yann Martel |
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9440bb6
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I was determined to move forward.
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Yann Martel |
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9fa8332
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Kau mungkin tidak percaya pada kehidupan, tapi aku tidak percaya pada kematian.
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kehidupan
kematian
mati
percaya
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Yann Martel |
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a062cbf
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Kalau begitu, apa gunanya punya akal, Richard Parker? Apakah sekadar untuk memenuhi kebutuhan sehari-hari --- mencari makanan, pakaian, dan atap untuk berteduh? Kenapa akal tak bisa memberikan jawaban-jawaban yang lebih kompleks? Kenapa kita bisa menanyakan hal yang tak ada jawabannya? Buat apa punya jala begitu besar kalau sedikit sekali ikan yang bisa ditangkap?
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ikan
jala
jawaban
pertanyaan
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Yann Martel |
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1e24b2f
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I went to temple at crowded times when Brahmins were too distracted to come between me and God.
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Yann Martel |
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8e07518
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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 night..
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Yann Martel |
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ddd8f47
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It's morning in Bethany and God is hungry God wants His breakfast. He comes to a fig tree. It's not the season for figs so the tree has no figs. God is peeved. The Son mutters "May you never bear fruit again " and instantly the fig tree withers. So says Matthew backed up by Mark. I ask you is it the fig tree's fault that it's not the season for figs What kind of thing is that to do to an innocent fig tree whither it instantly I coul..
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Yann Martel (Author) |
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f845fdd
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life will defend itself no matter how smallit is
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Yann Martel |
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ce631e6
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A very long sentence, anchored in solid nouns, with countless subordinate clauses, scores of adjectives and adverbs, and bold conjunctions that launched the sentence in a new direction--besides unexpected interludes--has finally, with a surprisingly quiet full stop, come to an end.
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Yann Martel |
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60f67f6
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How does one say in the jargon of musicology that my sould was pulled out of me and thrown up in the air, to be tossed about by the music. How does one say that I breathed, that I existed, in harmony with the ups and downs of those notes. What kind of notes both elevate and cast down, exalt and crush?
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Yann Martel |
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f8613d5
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I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point or a lion merely turning its head. But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it...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 s..
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Yann Martel |
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0b15e8b
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When the course of experience made me see that there is no saviour and no special grace, no remission beyond the human, that pain is to be endured and fades, if it fades, only with time, then God became nothing to me but a dyslexic dog, with neither bark nor bite.
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experience
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Yann Martel |
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0f4905e
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I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point or a lion merely turning it's head. But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it.
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Yann Martel |
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625450e
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A good zoo is a place of carefully worked-out coincidence: exactly where an animal says to us, "Stay out!"...we say to it, "Stay in!" with our barriers. Under such conditions of diplomatic peace, all animals are content and we can relax and have a look at each other."
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Yann Martel |
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30c3d08
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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.
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Yann Martel |
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2213c91
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Catholics have a reputation for severity, for judgment that comes down heavily.
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Yann Martel |
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d493681
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I entered the church, without fear this time, for it was now my house too. I offered prayers to Christ, who is alive. Then I raced down the hill on the left and raced up the hill on the right--to offer thanks to Lord Krishna for having put Jesus of Nazareth, whose humanity I found so compelling, in my way.
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Yann Martel |
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0ddabd4
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I'm more preoccupied with furnishing my head than the place where I live. The most beautiful rooms I have entered have been empty ones.
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interior-design
knowledge
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Yann Martel |
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5bd108d
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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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93df501
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You see these guinea pigs? Well... they'er not dangerous.
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Yann Martel |
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c837dbf
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Two blind people in two separate lifeboats meeting up in the Pacific-the coincidence seems a little far-fetched, no?
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Yann Martel |
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6111a05
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I concluded, that it was not a dream or a delusion or a misplaced memory or a fancy or any other falsity, but a solid, true thing witnessed while in a weakened highly agitated state.
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Yann Martel |
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3ce96b0
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If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? [...] Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist.
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life
love
science
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Yann Martel |
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7f6c307
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There's no peace like the peace of an inner courtyard on a sunny day.
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Yann Martel |
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9448f96
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You might have noticed that I have been sending you used books. I have done this not to save money, but to make a point which is that a used book, unlike a used car, hasn't lost any of its initial value. A good story rolls of the lot into the hands of its new reader as smoothly as the day it was written. And there's another reason for these used paperbacks that never cost much even when new; I like the idea of holding a book that someone el..
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Yann Martel |
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7903dc3
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If God on the Cross is God shamming a human tragedy, it turns the Passion of Christ into the Farce of Christ. The death of the Son must be real. Father Martin assured me it was. But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste for death forever in His mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish t..
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inspirational-life
inspirational-love
inspirational-quotes
jesus
love
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Yann Martel |
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63bad8e
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Ravi was right. Truly I was to be the next goat. I had a wet, trembling, half-drowned, heaving and coughing three-year-old adult Bengal tiger in my lifeboat. Richard Parker rose unsteadily to his feet on the tarpaulin, eyes blazing as they met mine, ears laid tight to his head, all weapons drawn. His head was the size and colour of the lifebuoy, with teeth. I turned around, stepped over the zebra and threw myself overboard.
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Yann Martel |
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b41c918
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And so, when she first heard of Hare Krishnas, she didn't hear right. She heard "Hairless Christians", and that is what they were to her for many years. 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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4c2563c
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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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8e45a4c
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If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination o the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.
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Yann Martel |
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f8e6985
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I love Canada. I miss the heat of India, the food, the house lizards on the walls, the musicals on the silver screen, the cows wandering on the streets, the crows cawing, even the talk of cricket matches, but I love Canada. It's a country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos.
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Yann Martel |
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44e18c5
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I don't know then. I wrote my book on the Holocaust without worrying about where the fucking bar code would go.
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Yann Martel |
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3630145
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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 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, and, of course, there are the rooms for the new members o..
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Yann Martel |
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fc79326
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Under the pathologist's microscope, life and death fight in an illuminated circle in a sort of cellular bullfight. The pathologist's job is to find the bull among the matador cells
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death
life
metaphor
microscope
pathologist
pathology
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Yann Martel |
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3140bb9
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Art is rooted in joy.
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life-lessons
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Yann Martel |
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6f2d843
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The sad fact is that there are no natural deaths, despite what doctors say. Every death is felt by someone as a murder, as the unjust taking of a loved being.
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Yann Martel |
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27f7638
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The sound would disappear, but the hurt would linger, like the smell of piss long after it has evaporated.
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Yann Martel |
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fa5fac3
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To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away.
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Yann Martel |
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4905181
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The precept that location is key to the success of a business applies to art, and even to life itself: we thrive or wither depending on how nourishing our environment is.
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Yann Martel |