Yann Martel Quotes:

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.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.5, Vintage Canada

Topics: Baseball, Sex, Drinking

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

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.51, Canongate Books

Topics: Life, Philosophy, Mean, Means Of Transportation, Life Of Pi Book

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.

source: - "Life of Pi". Book by Yann Martel, September 11, 2001.

Topics: Prayer, Philosophy, Moving, Means Of Transportation, Life Of Pi Book

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.

Topics: Anger, Heart, Evil

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...

Topics: Life, Beautiful, Jealous, Life Is So Beautiful, Possessive Love

I've never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart. I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. The pain is like an axe that chops my heart.

Topics: Goodbye, Dream, Pain

Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.

Topics: Misery, Madness, Company

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

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.314, Vintage Canada

Topics: Mind, Want, Soar, Bereft, Turn To God

There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God... These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside.

Topics: People, Realizing, Failing

Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction.

source: - "May Richard Parker be always at your side". The Guardian Interview, www.theguardian.com. November 26, 2002.

Topics: Mean, Reality, Play, Volition

It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.294, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Letting Go, Important, Importance, Life Of Pi Book

My gratitude to him is as boundless as the Pacific ocean.

Topics: Gratitude, Grateful, Ocean, Pacific Ocean

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 like a spy.

source: - Yann Martel (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.170, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Clever, Self, Law, Life Of Pi Book

Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.

source: - Yann Martel (2010). “Beatrice and Virgil”, p.15, Canongate Books

Topics: Stories, Noise, Painting

I love Canada...It is a great country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos.

Topics: Country, Intelligent, People, Hairdos

I have a fierce will to live. 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.

Topics: Giving Up, Loss, Fighting, Improbability, Will To Live

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 senses.

Topics: Expression, Grace, Earth, Manifold

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.

Topics: Letting Go, Opening Up, Faith In God

The presence of God is the finest of rewards.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.69, Vintage Canada

Topics: Rewards, Finest, Presence Of God

For fear, real fear such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. 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.

Topics: Memories, Fear, Real, Defeated You

We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.

Topics: Zoos, Animal, Men, Dangerous Animals, Zoology

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 or debited depending on our actions.

Topics: Karma, Our Actions, Way

We are all born like Catholics, aren't we—in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?

Topics: Catholic, Introducing, Figures

As for fame, fame felt like nothing. Fame was not a sensation like love or hunger or loneliness, welling from within and invisible to the outside eye. It was rather entirely external, coming from the minds of others. It existed in the way people looked at him or behaved towards him. In that, being famous was no different from being gay, or Jewish, or from a visible minority: you are who you are, and then people project onto you some notion they have.

Topics: Loneliness, Eye, Gay

I think art comes from some sense of discomfort with the world, some sense of not quite fitting with it.

source: - "May Richard Parker be always at your side". The Guardian Interview, www.theguardian.com. November 26, 2002.

Topics: Art, Thinking, World

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. As for nonfiction, for history, it may be real, but its truth is slippery, hard to access, with no fixed meaning bolted to it. If history doesn't become story, it dies to everyone except the historian.

source: - Yann Martel (2010). “Beatrice and Virgil”, p.16, Canongate Books

Topics: Real, Emotional, Fiction, Garlands, Fiction And Nonfiction

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.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.178, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Dream, Hands, Survival, Stop Hoping, Rescue Me

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.

Topics: Music, Dream, Appreciation

When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.

Topics: Sad, Pain, Unbearable

My greatest wish — other than salvation — was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time.

Topics: Book, Eye, Long

The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table. That which sustains the universe beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression, is the same thing. The finite within the infinite, the infinite within the finite.

Topics: Struggle, Expression, Water

If you stumble about believability, what are you living for? 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?

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.424, Canongate Books

Topics: Life, Believe, Love Is, Love Is Hard, Life Of Pi Book

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? Doesn't that make life a story?

Topics: Life, Travel, Understanding, Life Of Pi Book

These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy...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 mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.

Topics: Children, Thinking, People, Leprosy, Angry Words

You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better.

Topics: Hope, Thinking, Might

It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.39, Canongate Books

Topics: Names, Sometimes, Life Of Pi Book

Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart.

Topics: Dream, Heart, Missing

To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures who people the tree of your life and give it new branches. To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It is like losing--I'm sorry, I would rather not go on.

Topics: Mother, Brother, Sorry, Niece And Nephew, Life Of Pi Book

It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.

Topics: Opponents, Defeat

The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.

Topics: Swings, Opposites, Boredom

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.

Topics: Dog, Atheist, Pain, Remission

That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?

Topics: Reality, Essence, Fiction

A realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.98, Canongate Books

Topics: Life, Realization, Principles

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.

source: - "Life of Pi". www.imdb.com. 2012.

Topics: Letting Go, Goodbye, Hurt, Life Of Pi Book

If there's only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it?

Topics: Sky, Passports

Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror.

Topics: Zoos, Wall, Father, Dangerous Animals

At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far.

Topics: Thinking, Wonder, Moments, Thick And Thin

I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion.

Topics: Beautiful, Challenges, Brotherhood

It is a vast country, so that inspires you. It's also the greatest hotel on earth: It welcomes people from everywhere. It's a good country to write from because in many ways Canada is the world.

Topics: Country, Writing, People, Good Country

You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.

Topics: Inspiring, Graduation, Cheer Up, Life Of Pi Book, Make The Best Of It

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.

Topics: Letting Go, Heart, Important

Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.

Topics: Risk, Reason, Throwing

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.

Topics: Agony, Suffering, Next

If you stumble over mere believability, what are you living for? 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? Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater

Topics: Believe, Love Is, Life Is Hard, Love Is Hard, Believability

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.

Topics: Inspirational, Moving, Saving, Adaptability, Ability To Adapt

Any writer will be happy and good only if they know what they're doing and why they're doing it.

Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness--how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I've got!

Topics: Views, Vastness, Tiny, Peepholes, Entry

In a healthy individual, a broken bone that has healed properly is strongest where it was once broken. You have not lost any life, Henry told himself. You will still get your fair share of years. Yet the quality of his life changed. Once you've been struck by violence, you acquire companions that never leave you entirely: Suspicion, Fear, Anxiety, Despair, Joylessness. The natural smile is taken from you and the natural pleasures you once enjoyed lose their appeal.

Topics: Taken, Years, Broken, Broken Bone

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.

Topics: Real, Emotional, Fiction

Don’t worry about being good…. Aspire to be authentic.

Topics: Worry, Be Good, Aspire

I can only tell my story, what you believe is up to you.

Topics: Believe, Up To You, Stories

If literature does one thing, it makes you more empathetic by making you live other lives and feel the pain of others. Ideologues don't feel the pain of others because they haven't imaginatively got under their skins.

source: - "Yann Martel: 'Jewish people don't own the Holocaust'" by Stephen Moss, www.theguardian.com. June 22, 2010.

Topics: Pain, Empathy, Skins, Ideologues

Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.113, Vintage Canada

Topics: Special, Dramatic, Unlimited, Life Of Pi Book

Truth is a nebulous thing. There are certain, definite truths, but the truth of our lives goes far beyond facts.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Facts, Truth Is, Certain

I had to stop hoping so much that a ship would rescue me. I should not count on outside help. Survival had to start with me. In my experience, a castaway’s worst mistake is to hope too much and to do too little. 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.

source: - "Life of Pi". Book by Yann Martel, September 11, 2001.

Topics: Dream, Mistake, Hands, Castaway, Stop Hoping

I was giving up. I would have given up - if a voice hadn't made itself heard in my heart. The voice said "I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will beat the odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine. The amazing will be seen everyday. I will put in all the hard work necessary. Yes, so long as God is with me, I will not die. Amen.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.158, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Giving Up, Hard Work, Heart, Life Of Pi Book

Religion is more than rite and ritual.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.79, Canongate Books

Topics: Life Of Pi Book, Rite, Ritual

...if you fall into a lion's pit, the reason the lion will tear you to pieces is not because it's hungry-be assured, zoo animals are amply fed-or because it's bloodthirsty, but because you've invaded it's territory.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.73, Canongate Books

Topics: Zoos, Fall, Animal, Assured

Just as art brings you to another place, so does religion - and to ask questions of factuality tends to reduce both. If you say you were inspired by a novel, that implies that your book is a work of fiction.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Art, Book, Doe

If you don't have dreams, how do you maneuver reality? Where do you get the ideas to change reality if not from dreams?

Topics: Dream, Reality, Ideas

What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell.

source: - Yann Martel (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.294, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Farewell, Life Of Pi Book, Terrible, Terrible Things

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.

source: - Yann Martel (2010). “Beatrice and Virgil”, p.20, Canongate Books

Topics: Earth, Might, Misery

Artists invent things as a way of telling the truth.

Topics: Artist, Way, Telling The Truth

Art is the suitcase of history, carrying the essentials. Art is the life buoy of history. Art is seed, art is memory, art is vaccine.

source: - Yann Martel (2010). “Beatrice and Virgil”, p.16, Canongate Books

Topics: Art, Memories, Vaccines, Buoys

We believe what we see.’...What do you do when you’re in the dark?

Topics: Believe, Dark

The animals might embody certain traits. We think of tigers as being ferocious, etc. But to my mind, it was the other way around: the humans embodied certain animal traits.

source: - Interview, www.bookbrowse.com. October 2, 2002.

Topics: Animal, Thinking, Mind

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?

source: - Yann Martel (2010). “Beatrice and Virgil”, p.103, Canongate Books

Topics: Creating, Long, Darkness

I love Canada. Its a wonderful political act of faith that exists atop a breathtakingly beautiful land.

Topics: Beautiful, Land, Political, Beautiful Land

Time is an illusion that makes us all pant.

Topics: Illusion

Words of divine consciousness: moral exaltation; lasting feelings of elevation, elation, joy; a quickening of the moral sense, which strikes one as more important than an intellectual understanding of things; an alignment of the universe along moral lines, not intellectual ones; a realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.98, Canongate Books

Topics: Joy, Understanding, Feelings, Elevation, Quickening

Music is a bird's answer to the noise and heaviness of words. It puts the mind in a state of exhilarated speechlessness.

source: - Yann Martel (1993). “The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios”, Orlando : Harcourt

Topics: Bird, Mind, Answers, Heaviness

It's hard to visualize James Bond without seeing one of the actors who played him. And it's hard to visualize Harry Potter without seeing Daniel Radcliffe. A movie is so visually powerful, so overwhelming, that it tends to crowd out how you might have imagined things.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Powerful, Potters, Actors

Even when God seemed to have abandoned me, he was watching. Even when he seemed indifferent to my suffering, he was watching. And when I was beyond all hope of saving, he gave me rest. Then he gave me a sign to continue my journey.

source: - "Fictional character: Adult Pi Patel". "Life of Pi", www.imdb.com. 2012.

Topics: Journey, Suffering, Saving

There's nothing like the unimaginable to make people believe.

source: - Yann Martel (2010). “Beatrice & Virgil”, p.30, Knopf Canada

Topics: Believe, People, Unimaginable

I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.

source: - Yann Martel (2002). “Life Of Pi”, p.138, Canongate Books

Topics: Grateful, Air, Doubt

So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?' Mr. Okamoto: 'That's an interesting question?' Mr. Chiba: 'The story with animals.' Mr. Okamoto: 'Yes. The story with animals is the better story.' Pi Patel: 'Thank you. And so it goes with God.

Topics: Animal, Differences, Interesting

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.

source: - Yann Martel (2015). “Life of Pi - CANCELED”, p.186, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Stars, Dark, Moon, Crescent

I preferred to set off and perish in search of my own kind than to live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and spiritual death on this murderous island.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.401, Canongate Books

Topics: Spiritual, Lonely, Islands, Half Life, Spiritual Death

Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.312, Canongate Books

Topics: Simple, Games, Elements, Life Of Pi Book, Lifeboats

I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.34, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Zoos, People, Grace, Life Of Pi Book, Illusion Of Freedom

I chose the name Pi because it's an irrational number (one with no discernable pattern). Yet scientists use this irrational number to come to a "rational" understanding of the universe. To me, religion is a bit like that, "irrational" yet with it we come together we come to a sound understanding of the universe.

source: - Interview, www.bookbrowse.com. October 2, 2002.

Topics: Irrational Numbers, Names, Understanding

Fanatics do not have faith - they have belief. With faith you let go. You trust. Whereas with belief you cling.

source: - "Third time lucky". Interview with Aida Edemariam, www.theguardian.com. October 22, 2002.

Topics: Letting Go, Have Faith, Belief

I'm not a consumer. I hate buying clothes. I don't have a mobile. I just don't need things. I don't like things.

source: - "Yann Martel: 'Jewish people don't own the Holocaust'" by Stephen Moss, www.theguardian.com. June 22, 2010.

Topics: Hate, Clothes, Needs, Buying Clothes

Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.171, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Decision, Over You, Allies

My greatest wish — other than salvation — was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.217, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Book, Eye, Long, Long Book, New Eyes

Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with a few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. Physically it is extraordinarily arduous, and morally it is killing...You get your happiness where you can. You reach a point where you're at the bottom of hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you're the luckiest person on earth. Why? Because at your feet you have a tiny dead fish

source: - Yann Martel (2002). “Life Of Pi”, p.292, Canongate Books

Topics: Life, Simple, Games, Life Of Pi Book, Lifeboats

A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.36, Canongate Books

Topics: House, Needs, Territory, Basic Needs

Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind, my heart.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.143, Canongate Books

Topics: Heart, Wind, Sea

You bring joy and pain in equal measure. Joy because you are with me, but pain because it wont be for long.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.123, Vintage Canada

Topics: Pain, Long, Joy, Joy And Pain

I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape.

source: - Marilyn Herbert, Yann Martel (2005). “Life of Pi”, p.62, Bookclub-in-a-Box

Topics: Meaningful, Believe, Order, Life Of Pi Book

It's amazing how willpower can build walls.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.342, Vintage Canada

Topics: Wall, Willpower

A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real.

source: - Yann Martel (2010). “Beatrice & Virgil”, p.10, Knopf Canada

Topics: Art, Real, Works Of Art

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.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.17, Vintage Canada

Topics: Animal, Forever, Social Hierarchy, Unforgiving

Mockery be damned, my urine looked delicious.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.244, Canongate Books

Topics: Mockery, Delicious

Christianity stretches back through the ages, but in essence it exists only at one time: right now.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.63, Vintage Canada

Topics: Essence, Age, Christianity

Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you Richard Parker!

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.143, Canongate Books

Topics: Jesus, Muhammad, Hinduism, Life Of Pi Book, Vishnu

Colonialism is a terrible bane for a people upon whom it is imposed, but a blessing for a language. English's drive to exploit the new and the alien, its zeal in robbing words from other languages, its incapacity to feel qualms over the matter, its museum-size overabundance of vocabulary, it shoulder-shrug approach to spelling, its don't-worry-be-happy concern for grammar-the result was a language whose colour and wealth Henry loved.

source: - Yann Martel (2010). “Beatrice and Virgil”, p.23, Canongate Books

Topics: Love, Blessing, Qualms About, Qualms, Incapacity

A great literary work can be completely, completely unpredictable. Which can sometimes make them very hard to read, but it gives them a great originality.

Topics: Giving, Originality, Sometimes, Great Literary, Literary Works

But I want to pray to Allah. I want to be a Christian.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.80, Vintage Canada

Topics: Christian, Want, Praying

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 just evicted would sputter, With what right do you throw us out? This is our home. We own it. We have lived here for years. We're calling the police, you scoundrel.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.18, Vintage Canada

Topics: Home, Thinking, Doors, Front Doors

Why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch?

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.111, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Giving, Reptiles, Answers, Life Of Pi Book

To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.79, Vintage Canada

Topics: Dignity, Depravity

I am not a particularly natural writer. I am not a person who can write in paragraphs the way some writers do. For me, it's sentence by sentence, sometimes word-by-word. And I revise constantly. It's a very laborious process, but I love doing it.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Writing, Way, Sometimes

Most people take who they are, naturally, as a given, and they're interested in the sexual other, but not in being the sexual other. Most men are interested in women - whether sexually or not is not the question - but they don't necessarily want to be a woman.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Men, People, Want

People always seek to compare. They can take the new, but only if it is somehow connected to the familiar. We need that in our lives, the mix of the new and the old. But of course I'm flattered about the comparison with Old man and the sea. Hemingway is a great writer.

source: - Interview, www.bookbrowse.com. October 2, 2002.

Topics: Men, Sea, People

I meet a number of people as a writer of fiction who say "Oh, I don't read much fiction," as if the history of the United States, just as an example, isn't an exercise in storytelling and myth-making.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Exercise, Numbers, People

A zoo is not an ideal place for an animal - of course the best place for a chimp is the wilds of Tanzania - but a good zoo is a decent, acceptable place. Animals are far more flexible than we realize. IF they weren't, they wouldn't have survived. But my opinion about zoos came after research. Initially I had the opinion that most people have, that they are jails.

Topics: Zoos, Animal, Jail, Tanzania

Sitting in an office for TOO long is not natural, perhaps, so that's why we should change it. I didn't say that out-and-out capitalism, which reduces humanity to dollar figures, is natural.

source: - Interview, www.bookbrowse.com. October 2, 2002.

Topics: Long, Office, Humanity

Life is an interpretation of a series of facts, and that interpretation is really what life is about. So the division between non-fiction and fiction has a certain logic, but it's a very limited one. And by and large, it isn't helpful.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Facts, Division, Fiction

Afterwards, when it's all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?

source: - Yann Martel (2010). “Beatrice and Virgil”, p.209, Canongate Books

Topics: Over You

If you don't let technology help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaurhood.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.114, Canongate Books

Topics: Technology, Ideas, Helping

There is nothing more satisfying than having a sentence fall into place in a way you feel is right, and then adding another one and then another one. It's extraordinarily satisfying.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Fall, Way, Feels, Fall Into Place

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.

source: - Yann Martel (2015). “Life of Pi - CANCELED”, p.201, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Months, Illusion, Week, Life Of Pi Book

If you take two steps towards God,' he used to tell me, 'God runs to you!

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.67, Vintage Canada

Topics: Running, Two, Steps

How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer, but art is very self-referential, whereas religion claims to go beyond the bounds of human existence.

source: - "Third time lucky" by Aida Edemariam, www.theguardian.com. October 22, 2002.

Topics: Art, Self, Evil

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.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.217, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Girl, Powerful, Book, Cheeks

We were, literally and figuratively, in the same boat.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.232, Canongate Books

Topics: Boat

How long does it take for a broken spirit to kill a body that has food, water and shelter?

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.290, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Broken Spirit, Long, Water

Art is a gift: you create and then you give away. How readers receive that gift is their business. If they hate it, that’s their response to it. Others respond by liking it. Either way, that is their interaction with the book, which is no longer mine.

Topics: Art, Hate, Book

Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed.

source: - Yann Martel (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.218, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Expression, Light, Despair, Blackness

And in between the two, in between the sky and the sea, were all the winds. And there were all the nights and all the moons. To be a castaway is to be a point perpetually at the centre of a circle. However much things may appear to change-the sea may shift from whisper to rage, the sky might go from fresh blue to blinding white to darkest black-the geometry never changes. Your gaze is always a radius. The circumference is ever great. In fact, the circles multiply. To be a castaway is to be caught in a harrowing ballet of circles.

Topics: Moon, Night, Blue, Castaway, Radius

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 world already something of an invention?

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.335, Vintage Canada

Topics: Stories, Elements, World, Using Words

My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.21, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Art, Ambition, Skulls, Grinning, Memento

I went about the job in a direct way. I took the hatchet in both my hands and vigorously beat the fish on the head with the hammerhead (I still didn’t have the stomach to use the sharp edge). The dorado did the most extraordinary thing as it died: it began to flash all kinds of colours in rapid succession. Blue, green, red, gold, and violet flickered and shimmered neon-like on its surface as it struggled. I felt I was beating a rainbow to death.

source: - Yann Martel (2015). “Life of Pi - CANCELED”, p.194, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Jobs, Blue, Hands, Sharp Edges, Hatchet

Japanese-owned cargo ship Tsimtsum, flying Panamanian flag, sank July 2nd, 1977, in Pacific, four days out of Manila. Am in lifeboat. Pi Patel my name. Have some food, some water, but Bengal tiger a serious problem. Please advise family in Winnepeg, Canada. Any help very much appreciated. Thank you.

source: - Yann Martel (2015). “Life of Pi - CANCELED”, p.246, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: July, Names, Water, Manila, Cargo

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.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.211, Canongate Books

Topics: Might, Losing, Enough, Lucidity

You can get used to anything - haven't I already said that? Isn't that what all survivors say?

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.321, Canongate Books

Topics: Survivor, Used, Said

Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body. It is from there that both babies and cancers are born.

source: - Yann Martel (2010). “Beatrice and Virgil”, p.96, Canongate Books

Topics: Baby, Cancer, Life And Death

High calls low and low calls high. I tell you, if you were in such dire straits as I was, you too would elevate your thoughts. The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.314, Vintage Canada

Topics: Mind, Want, Lows

Don’t you bully me with your politeness!

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.424, Canongate Books

Topics: Bully, Politeness

As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.20, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Sloth, Sound, Hearing, Uninterested

I have read that there are two fears that cannot be trained out of us: the startle reaction upon hearing an unexpected noise, and vertigo. I would like to add a third, to wit, the rapid and direct approch of a known killer

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.292, Vintage Canada

Topics: Two, Hearing, Add, Vertigo

My suffering left me sad and gloomy.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.12, Canongate Books

Topics: Suffering, Gloomy, Left

Can there be any happiness greater than the happiness of salvation?

source: - Yann Martel (2015). “Life of Pi - CANCELED”, p.242, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Salvation, Greater

I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.21, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Men, Ties, Careful, Inverted, Working Life

And what of my extended family-birds, beasts, and reptiles? They too have drowned. Every single thing I value in life has been destroyed. And I am allowed no explanation? I am to suffer hell without any account from heaven? In that case, what is the purpose of reason, Richard Parker? Is it no more than to shine at practicalities-the getting of food, clothing and shelter? Why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch? (pg. 98)

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.108, Vintage Canada

Topics: Giving, Shining, Bird, Practicality

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.

source: - Yann Martel (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.86, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Technology, Ideas, Two

There's no peace like the peace of an inner courtyard on a sunny day.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.260, Vintage Canada

Topics: Peace, Sunny Day, Sunny

It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.135, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Night, Champion, Made, Bad Night

The tennis challenger starts strong but soon loses confidence in his playing. The champion racks up the games. But in the final set, when the challenger has nothing left to lose, he becomes relaxed again, insouciant, daring. Suddenly he's playing like the devil and the champion must work hard to get those last points.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.149, Vintage Canada

Topics: Strong, Hard Work, Games, Racks

If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.

Topics: Writing, Fiction, Genre

A movie will do in one second, with one image, what it will take a novelist at least a page to describe.

source: - "Life of Pi author Yann Martel: 'Overall, I think it's a wonderful companion piece'". Interview with Mark Medley, nationalpost.com. November 21, 2012.

Topics: Communication, Novelists, Pages

He's a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.89, Vintage Canada

Topics: Men, Shy, Taught, Showing Off

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.

source: - Yann Martel (2010). “Beatrice and Virgil”, p.7, Canongate Books

Topics: Animal, Together, Stories

Was it the forgetfulness of old age or personal incapacity that made the man able to say please but not thank you?

source: - Yann Martel (2010). “Beatrice & Virgil”, p.91, Knopf Canada

Topics: Men, Age, Able, Incapacity

Christianity is a religion in a rush.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.63, Vintage Canada

Topics: Christianity, Frenzy

I can well imagine an athiest's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!" - and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.

source: - Yann Martel (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.76, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: White, Light, Self, Warm

I couldn't get Him out of my head. Still can't. I spent three solid days thinking about Him. The more He bothered me, the less I coul forget Him. And the more I learned about Him, the less I wanted to leave Him.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.90, Canongate Books

Topics: Thinking, Three, Forget, Forget Him

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.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.336, Vintage Canada

Topics: Stories, Dry, Want, Life Of Pi Book

First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.82, Canongate Books

Topics: Firsts, Wonder, Fit

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, the moment each one imagines that Krishna is her partner alone, he vanishes. So it is that we should not be jealous of God.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.80, Canongate Books

Topics: Girl, Sweet, Jealous, Lord Krishna

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.

Topics: Pain, Blessed, Heart

But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste of 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 that upon Himself? Why not leave death to mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? -- Love. That was his answer.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.67, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Beautiful, Father, Real, Perfect Love, Tainted

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.

source: - Yann Martel (2010). “Beatrice & Virgil”, p.50, Knopf Canada

Topics: Dark, Light, Knives, Pears, Inner Light

Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them -- and then they leap.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.31, Vintage Canada

Topics: Brother, Atheist, Legs, Different Faiths

It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.

source: - Yann Martel (2015). “Life of Pi - CANCELED”, p.194, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Simple, Killing, Used

I have a story that will make you believe in God.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.11, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Believe, Stories, Believe In God

People move because of the wear and tear of anxiety. Because of the gnawing feeling that no matter how hard they work their efforts will yield nothing, that what they build up in one year will be torn down in one day by others. Because of the impression that the future is blocked up, that *they* might do all right but not their children. Because of the feeling that nothing will change, that happiness and prosperity are possible only somewhere else.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.119, Canongate Books

Topics: Children, Moving, Years

Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field-but they're all we have.

source: - Yann Martel (2010). “Beatrice and Virgil”, p.88, Canongate Books

Topics: Dancing, Trying, Toads

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.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.59, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Nature, Animal, Effort

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.

source: - Yann Martel (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.307, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Fall, Animal, Ostriches, Badgers, Tokyo

Books, like people, can't be reduced to the cost of the materials with which they were made. Books, like people, become unique and precious once you get to know them.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “What Is Stephen Harper Reading?: Yann Martel's Recommended Reading for a Prime Minister and Book Lovers of All Stripes”, p.152, Vintage Canada

Topics: Book, Unique, People

Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans.

source: - "Life of Pi". Book by Yann Marte, September 11, 2001.

Topics: Animal, Training, Important

Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they've known for a great unknown beyond the horizon? ... The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.86, Vintage Canada

Topics: Moving, People, Horizon, Life Of Pi Book, Beyond The Horizon

It was as unbelievable as the moon catching fire.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.114, Vintage Canada

Topics: Moon, Fire, Catching, Catching Fire

Much hostile and aggressive behaviour among animals is the expression of social insecurity.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.73, Canongate Books

Topics: Animal, Expression, Insecurity, Life Of Pi Book

God is universal," spluttered the priest. The imam nodded strong approval. "There is only one God." "And with their one god Muslims are always causing troubles and provoking riots. The proof of how bad Islam is, is how uncivilized Muslims are,: pronounced the pandit. "Says the slave-driver of the cast system," huffed the imam. "Hindus enslave people and worship dressed-up dolls." "They are golden calf lovers. They kneel before the cows," the priest chimed in. "While Christians kneel before a white man! They are flunkies of a foreign god. They are nightmare of all nonwhite people.

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.75, Vintage Canada

Topics: Christian, Strong, Men, Causing Trouble, Pandit

Music moves me - duh - and that is like having a window opening on a heightened reality, but the effect is fleeting: When the music ends, the magic, the uplifting, vanishes and the window slams shut. Words, on the other hand, by the nature of how they work, emotions evoked by dint of carefully laid out thoughts, have a more lingering effect.

Topics: Uplifting, Moving, Reality, Lingering, Duh

My next book - each one while I'm working on it - dances in my mind and thrills me at every turn. If it didn't, why would I write it?

Topics: Book, Writing, Mind

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.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.30, Canongate Books

Topics: Sea, Water, Perfection

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.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.63, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Christian, Religion, Devotion To God

My ears were full. Nothing more, not one more sound, could push into them and be registered.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.137, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Sound, Ears

The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.

Topics: Book, Ideas, Fiction

Work, work, work, but what mark do we leave, what point do we make? People who are too beholden to work become like erasers: as things move forward, they leave in their wake no trace of themselves.

Topics: Moving, People, Mark, Erasers

My alarm clock during my childhood was a pride of lions.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.29, Canongate Books

Topics: Pride, Childhood, Alarms, Alarm Clocks

In my youth, it was my good luck to have a few good teachers, men and women, who came into my head and lit a match.

Topics: Teacher, Good Luck, Men

Most of us get our history through story.

Topics: Stories

...for everything has a trace of the divine in it.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.79, Canongate Books

Topics: Divine

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?

source: - Yann Martel (1993). “The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios”, Orlando : Harcourt

Topics: Crush, Air, Jargon

The language of prose is very different than the language of cinema, so the movie has to successfully translate what was in the book.

source: - Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. November 6, 2007.

Topics: Book, Different, Cinema

Words are much better at relating emotions and thoughts.

source: - "Life of Pi author Yann Martel: 'Overall, I think it's a wonderful companion piece'". Interview with Mark Medley, nationalpost.com. November 21, 2012.

Topics: Emotion

[The taxidermist is] a historian, dealing with an animal's past; the zookeeper is a politician, dealing with an animal's present; and everyone else is a citizen who must decide on that animal's future (...) The indifference of the many, combined with the active hatred of the few, has sealed the fate of animals.

source: - Yann Martel (2010). “Beatrice & Virgil”, p.97, Knopf Canada

Topics: Fate, Animal, Past, Zookeepers

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

source: - Yann Martel (2009). “Life of Pi”, p.230, Vintage Canada

Topics: Book, Wish, Salvation, Life Of Pi Book

I can't live for more than four years outside of Canada. I'm Canadian, so ultimately that is my reference point.

Topics: Years, Four, Canada

Come aboard if your destination is oblivion- it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat if you want. But it's a sad view.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.125, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Views, Together, Want

Gloom is but a shadow of a cloud passing by

Topics: Clouds, Passing By, Shadow

Bapu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.81, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Want, God Love, Said

When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.

source: - Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.132, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Topics: Selfish, Empathy, Survival

Books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play baseball or soccer, and mine was the gangly, unathletic kid that no one wanted on their team.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.7, Canongate Books

Topics: Soccer, Baseball, Team

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity – it’s envy.

source: - Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.19, Canongate Books

Topics: Envy, Sticks, Reason, Life Of Pi Book