Life of Pi

by Yann Martel

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.

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

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

in that elusive, irrational number with which scientists try to understand the universe, I found refuge.

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

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.

it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside.

1 boy with a complete set of light clothing but for one lost shoe 1 spotted hyena 1 Bengal tiger 1 lifeboat 1 ocean 1 God

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.

The first problem arose: bait. I thought about it. There were the dead animals, but stealing food from under a tiger’s nose was a proposition I was not up to. He would not realize that it was an investment that would bring him an excellent return.

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.

“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?”