quotes by Yann Martel

"To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi)

"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."
— Yann Martel

"Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed, hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see the God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God are hat wearing Muslims"
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi)

"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 unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... 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 (Life of Pi: Student Edition)

"My suffering left me sad and gloomy."
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi)

"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."
— Yann Martel

""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.""
— Yann Martel

"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."
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi)

"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. "
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi)

"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..."
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi: Student Edition)

"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."
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi)

"To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as transportation. "
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi: Student Edition)

"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."
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi)

"When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling."
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi: A novel)

"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?"
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi)

"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."
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi)

"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."
— Yann Martel

"It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names."
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi)

"Can there be any happiness greater than the happiness of salvation?"
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi)

"It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards..."
— Yann Martel