Quotes from Yann Martel

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

I'm afraid the popularity of the domestic cat would drop very quickly if little kitty could roar its displeasure.

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.

I applied my reason at every moment. 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.

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

Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.

A zoo is a cultural institution. Like a public library, like a museum, it is at the service of popular education and science. And by that token, not much of a money-making venture for the Greater Good and the Greater Profit are not compatible aims.

Only death consistently excites your emotions, whether contemplating when life is safe and stale, or fleeing it when life is threatened and precious

There's no boot. No boot? No. That makes me sad. I ate it. You ate the boot? Yes. Was it good? No. Were the cigarettes good? No. I couldn't finish them. I couldn't finish the boot.

The truth of life is that Brahman is no different from atman, the spiritual force within us, what you might call the soul.

Time and sunshine healed a sore, but the process was slow, and new boils appeared if I didn't stay dry.

This story has a happy ending.

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. I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while....But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

I don't mean to defend zoos. Close them all down if you want (and let us hope that what wildlife remains can survive in what is left of the natural world). I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusion about freedom plague them both.

And so, in that Greek letter that looks like a shack with a corrugated tin roof, in that elusive, irrational number with which scientists try to understand the universe, I found refuge.

You may not believe in life, but I don't believe in death. ... 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. 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.

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.

In his entirely personal experience of them, English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was from the streets. Which is to stay, stab his heart and it would bleed French, slice his brain open and its convolutions would be lined with English and German, and touch his hands and they would feel Spanish.

We are cynical about our own species, but less so about animals, especially wild ones. We might not shelter them from habitat destruction, but we do tend to shelter them from excessive irony.

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, jealous possessive love that grabs what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but a passing shadow of a cloud.

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.

nature as a whole was an exceptionally fine illustration of science.

I'll tell you, that's one thing I hate about my nickname, the way the number runs on forever. 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.

I blinked deliberately, expecting my eyelids to act like lumberjacks. But the trees would not fall.