Quotes from Yann Martel

How true is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.

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.

Kematian selalu membuntuti Kehidupan dengan begitu dekat, bukanlah karena keharusan biologis, melainkan karena rasa iri. Kehidupan ini begitu indah, sehingga maut pun jatuh cinta padanya. Cinta yang pencemburu dan posesif, yang menyambar apapun yang bisa diambilnya

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.

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

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

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.

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

Mockery be damned, my urine looked delicious.

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

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

Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life.

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.

There are animals we haven't stopped by. Don't think they're harmless. Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.

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.

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.

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.

I felt like I was beating a rainbow to death.

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.

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.

I ask you, is it the fig tree's fault that it's not the season for figs? What kind of thing is that to do to an innocent tree, wither it instantly?

This tiny habitation on wheels, with bit parts of the living room, the washroom, and the fireplace, is a pathetic admission that human life is no more than this: an attempt to feel at home while racing towards oblivion. He

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

Because to suffer and do nothing is to be nothing, while to suffer and do something is to become someone.