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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 56b4480 | 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." | Yann Martel | ||
| 698289d | artist, | Yann Martel | ||
| 2b057a9 | 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.. | Yann Martel | ||
| daf9849 | The sun was beginning to pull the curtains on the day. | Yann Martel | ||
| c55a6d7 | 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. | Yann Martel | ||
| 70884c5 | 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. | Yann Martel | ||
| e9e044e | When animals fight, it is with the intent to kill and with the understanding that they may be killed. | Yann Martel | ||
| be201aa | hole. The temperature climbed. | Yann Martel | ||
| 7bbd24d | Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, | Yann Martel | ||
| 1ea0abe | Scegliere il dubbio come filosofia di vita equivale ad eleggere l'immobilita a proprio mezzo di trasporto. | Yann Martel | ||
| 22588bd | 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. | Yann Martel | ||
| 8199836 | 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. | Yann Martel | ||
| ecb6caf | If you take two steps towards God," he used to tell me, "God runs to you!" | Yann Martel | ||
| 1a2eca7 | 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... | Yann Martel | ||
| 52c2b7b | 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. | Yann Martel | ||
| f521f1d | 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. | Yann Martel | ||
| db41e30 | Her fear was something useless that only hampered her. | Yann Martel | ||
| d3ba360 | 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. | Yann Martel | ||
| 31d0489 | The multitude of the curious and the offended descends upon him. | curious | Yann Martel | |
| 6032242 | HIs life was always a happenstance. | Yann Martel | ||
| 5049034 | 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. | time | Yann Martel | |
| 494d347 | 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, | Yann Martel | ||
| 10be917 | I underestimated her. I under-estimated her grit. She | Yann Martel | ||
| 54c8416 | 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.. | Yann Martel | ||
| 0b5d690 | 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. | Yann Martel | ||
| 829628b | But religion is more than rite and ritual. There is what the rite and ritual stand for. | Yann Martel | ||
| 951ed8c | 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.. | Yann Martel | ||
| 52e892d | 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 the 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 may be nothing more than life-hungry stupidity. | Yann Martel | ||
| 7aa8a44 | 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 bht the passing shadow of a cloud. | Yann Martel | ||
| f520f14 | Su song dep den muc cai chet da phai long no | Yann Martel | ||
| d7a8dbf | I'll tell you, that's one thing I hate about my nickname, the way the number runs on forever. It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let it go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said, but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse. That bungled goodbye hurts me to this day. | infinity life-of-pi | Yann Martel | |
| 73cd95c | What a strange, wondrous thing, music. At last the chattering mind is silenced. No past to regret, to future to worry about, no more frantic knitting of words and thoughts. Only a beautiful, soaring nonsense. | Yann Martel | ||
| 6095206 | Territories in the wild are large not as a matter of taste but of necessity. In a zoo, we do for animals what we have done for ourselves with houses: we bring together in a small space what in the wild is spread out. Whereas before for us the cave was here, the river over there, the hunting grounds a mile that way, the lookout next to it, the berries somewhere else--all of them infested with lions, snakes, ants, leeches and poison ivy--now .. | Yann Martel | ||
| d826ac1 | 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 him. It has no decency, respects no law of 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 m.. | Yann Martel | ||
| 02806e8 | a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful. | Yann Martel | ||
| 703a332 | I was weeping because Richard Parker left me so unceremoniously. It broke my heart... After all we had been through he didn't even look back. But I have to believe in his eyes there was more than my own reflection staring back at me. I know it, I felt it. Even if I can't prove it... I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye... I wish I had said. .. | Yann Martel | ||
| 938907e | Oncoming death is terrible enough, but worse still is oncoming death with time to spare, time in which all the happiness that was yours and all the happiness that might have been yours becomes clear to you. You see with utter lucidity all that you are losing. The sight brings on an oppressive sadness that no car about to hit you or water about to drown you can match. The feeling is truly unbearable. | Yann Martel | ||
| a0cba4c | To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity. I stopped attending Mass at Our Lady of Immaculate Conception and went instead to Our Lady of Angels. I no longer lingered after Friday prayer among my brethren. I went to temple at crowded times when the Brahmins were too distracted to come between God and me. | Yann Martel | ||
| 00f232d | if you're going to be religious, you must be either a Hindu, a Christian or a Muslim. You heard what they said on the esplanade." "I don't see 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.. | Yann Martel | ||
| cd8f7d8 | Ayn ly dbr lspr `l Hyy hmkTSv`yym, rk zAt - SH`nybh KHmvh KHlvlAt Hnk, vAp SHhyA pvnh lKHyvvn hhpvKH, hyA tvTSyA At nSHmtv SHl Adm Am hvA lA yyzhr. | Yann Martel | ||
| 7d823b6 | Swimming instruction, which in time became swimming practice, was gruelling, but there was the deep pleasure of doing a stroke with increasing ease and speed, over and over, till hypnosis practically, the water turning from molten lead to liquid light. | Yann Martel | ||
| df2a528 | I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with 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 cho.. | Yann Martel | ||
| d53ca64 | These 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. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defence, not God's, that the self-.. | Yann Martel | ||
| 755a8af | It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with 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 mea.. | Yann Martel |