Life of Pi

by Yann Martel

I would turn Portugal into a fiction. That’s what fiction is about, isn’t it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?

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.

I chose the sloth because its demeanour—calm, quiet and introspective—did something to soothe my shattered self.

How does it survive, you might ask. Precisely by being so slow. Sleepiness and slothfulness keep it out of harm’s way, away from the notice of jaguars, ocelots, harpy eagles and anacondas.

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

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.

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.

he assured us that the French had very low standards of personal hygiene.

Nevertheless, an Olympic pool is an Olympic pool, touched by immortal glory.

The more you look, the more you see. You are in Zootown!

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

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.

For that is what animals are, conservative, one might even say reactionary.

An animal inhabits its space, whether in a zoo or in the wild, in the same way chess pieces move about a chessboard—significantly.

Don’t we say, “There’s no place like home”? That’s certainly what animals feel. Animals are territorial. That is the key to their minds.

Would you rather be put up at the Ritz with free room service and unlimited access to a doctor or be homeless without a soul to care for you?

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

“If we had politicians like these goats and rhinos we’d have fewer problems in our country. Unfortunately we have a prime minister who has the armour plating of a rhinoceros without any of its good sense.”

“Why tolerate darkness? Everything is here and clear, if only we look carefully.”

It was my first clue that 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.

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

He died of internal bleeding after someone fed him a broken beer bottle.

Bruh

I learned the lesson that an animal is an animal, essentially and practically removed from us,

Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.

Life goes on and you don’t touch tigers.

A flamingo in the wild won’t mind you if you stay more than three hundred yards away. Cross that limit and it becomes tense. Get even closer and you trigger a flight reaction from which the bird will not cease until the three-hundred-yard limit is set again, or until heart and lungs fail.

Interesting

It is not so much a question of constructing an imitation of conditions in the wild as of getting to the essence of these conditions.

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.

Animals that escape go from the known into the unknown—and if there is one thing an animal hates above all else, it is the unknown.

Socially inferior animals are the ones that make the most strenuous, resourceful efforts to get to know their keepers.

for everything has a trace of the divine in it.

The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table.

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 with God.

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.

what arrested me was my intuitive understanding that he was there—open, patient—in case someone, anyone, should want to talk to him; a problem of the soul, a heaviness of the heart, a darkness of the conscience, he would listen with love. He was a man whose profession it was to love, and he would offer comfort and guidance to the best of his ability.

I couldn’t imagine Lord Krishna consenting to be stripped naked, whipped, mocked, dragged through the streets and, to top it off, crucified—and at the hands of mere humans, to boot.

I’d never heard of a Hindu god dying. Brahman Revealed did not go for death. Devils and monsters did, as did mortals, by the thousands and millions—that’s what they were there for.

Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect?

Christianity is a religion in a rush. Look at the world created in seven days. Even on a symbolic level, that’s creation in a frenzy.

Tree took account of road, which was aware of air, which was mindful of sea, which shared things with sun.

At the rate you’re going, if you go to temple on Thursday, mosque on Friday, synagogue on Saturday and church on Sunday, you only need to convert to three more religions to be on holiday for the rest of your life.”

The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.

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

“He seems to be attracting religions the way a dog attracts fleas,”

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?

people move in the hope of a better life.

The orangutans were as eager for chapattis as ever; the monkeys never asked after the news from Delhi; the rhinos and goats continued to live in peace; the birds twittered; the clouds carried rain; the sun was hot; the earth breathed; God was—there was no Emergency in my world.

But it was to Father the crowning touch in Mrs. Gandhi’s dictatorial takeover of the nation. The camel at the zoo was unfazed, but that straw broke Father’s back.

The life of a zoo, like the life of its inhabitants in the wild, is precarious. It is neither big enough a business to be above the law nor small enough to survive on its margins.

To prosper, a zoo needs parliamentary government, democratic elections, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, rule of law and everything else enshrined in India’s Constitution.