Yann Martel

Life of Pi (2001)

• My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
  • pg. 3

• 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.

• I was weeping because Richard Parker left me so unceremoniously. What a terrible thing it is to botch the farewell. I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things meaningful shape.
  • pg. 285

• A tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he’s not careful.
  • pg. 6

• Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when they are not preoccupied with science.
  • pg. 5

• The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar.
  • pg. 358

• To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.
  • pg. 28

• A person can get used to anything, even to killing.
  • p. 234

• "Bapu Gandhi said, 'All religions are true.' I just want to love God," I blurted out, and looked down, red in the face.
  • p. 69

• Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed. A school of fish appeared around the net or a knot cried out to be reknotted. Or I thought of my family of how they were spared this terrible agony. The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving.
  • p. 209

• I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.
  • p. 161

• I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.
  • p. 192

• I 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.
  • p. 208

• There were many seas. The sea roared like a tiger. The sea whispered in your ear like a friend telling you secrets. The sea clinked like small change in a pocket. The sea thundered like avalanches. The sea hissed like sandpaper working on wood. The sea sounded like someone vomiting. The sea was dead silent.
  • p. 215

• Thank you. And so it goes with God.

• If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.

• Don't you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?
  • p. 330

• 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.

• If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?
  • pg. 297

• It was Richard Parker who calmed me down. It is the irony of this story that the one who scared me witless to start with was the very same who brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even wholeness.
  • pg. 162

• Then Richard Parker, companion of my torment, awful, fierce thing that kept me alive, moved forward and disappeared forever from my life.
  • pg. 285

• I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality. (p. 381)

• Only death consistently excites your emotions, whether contemplating it when life is safe and stale, or fleeing it when life is threatened and precious

• If you take two steps toward God, God runs toward you

• 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.
  • pg. 6

• My greatest wish - other than salvation - was to have a book.
  • pg. 207

• 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 is low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured.