Quotes from Yann Martel

If you don't have dreams, how do you maneuver reality? Where do you get the ideas to change reality if not from dreams?

And so, when she first heard of Hare Krishnas, she didn't hear right. She heard "Hairless Christians", and that is what they were to her for many years. When I corrected her, I told her that in fact she was not so wrong; that 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.

I entered the church, without fear this time, for it was now my house too. I offered prayers to Christ, who is alive. Then I raced down the hill on the left and raced up the hill on the right—to offer thanks to Lord Krishna for having put Jesus of Nazareth, whose humanity I found so compelling, in my way.

If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination o the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.

I love Canada. I miss the heat of India, the food, the house lizards on the walls, the musicals on the silver screen, the cows wandering on the streets, the crows cawing, even the talk of cricket matches, but I love Canada. It's a country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos.

All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in a strange, sometimes inexplicable ways.

A movie is so visually powerful, so overwhelming, that it tends to crowd out how you might have imagined things.

If there is a change, it is usually for the lesser rather than the greater; many people seem to lose God along life's way.

And I survived because I made a point of forgetting.

Progress is unstoppable. It is a drumbeat to which we must all march. Technology helps and good ideas spread - these are two laws of nature. If you don't let technology help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaurhood!

Seperti perpustakaan umum, atau museum, kebun binatang bertujuan melayani bidang pendidikan populer serta ilmu pengetahuan.

Some of us give up on life with only a resigned sigh. 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 what the cost of battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the very end. It's not a question of courage. It's...an inability to let go. It may be nothing more than life hungry stupidity.

Kalau nyawa kita sendiri terancam, kemampuan kita berempati jadi tumpul oleh hasrat egois yang amat sangat untuk bertahan hidup.

Cái quan tr?ng ? ??i là ph?i k?t thúc m?i th? cho ch?n chu. Có th? ta má»›i yên tâm mà Ä'i ???c. N?u không thì lúc nào trong ta cÅ©ng ??y nh?ng l?i mu?n nói mà ch?ng bao gi? nói, và lòng ta s? n?ng trÄ©u ân h?n.

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 to people the tree of your life and give it new branches.

Art is rooted in joy.

I don't know if I saw blood before turning into Mother's arms or if I daubed it on later, in my memory, with a brush (Life of Pi 36)

Instead of coconut yam kootu, why not boiled beef tongue with a mustard sauce?" "That sounds non-veg.

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. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it.

If Christ played with doubt, so must we. 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.

Und dann war da die Frau, der ein Löwe den Sari auszog. Sie drehte sich wie ein Jojo, denn dem tödlichen Ende zog sie die tödliche Schande dann doch vor. [...] Verletzt wurde sie nicht; zahlreiche Männer eilten begeistert zu Hilfe.

I don't believe in religion. Religion is darkness

It was frightening, the extent to which a full belly made for a good mood.

How does one say in the jargon of musicology that my sould was pulled out of me and thrown up in the air, to be tossed about by the music. How does one say that I breathed, that I existed, in harmony with the ups and downs of those notes. What kind of notes both elevate and cast down, exalt and crush?