Quotes from Yann Martel

The sad fact is that there are no natural deaths, despite what doctors say. Every death is felt by someone as a murder, as the unjust taking of a loved being.

Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer?

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity- its envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can.

The sound would disappear, but the hurt would linger, like the smell of piss long after it has evaporated.

Another favorite position of his was sitting with his back to me, his rear half resting on the floor of the boat and his front half on the bench, his face buried into the stern, paws right next to his head, looking as if we were playing hide-and-seek and he were the one counting. In this position he tended to lie very still, with only the occasional twitching of his ears to indicate that he is not necessarily sleeping.

To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away.

When the course of experience made me see that there is no saviour and no special grace, no remission beyond the human, that pain is to be endured and fades, if it fades, only with time, then God became nothing to me but a dyslexic dog, with neither bark nor bite.

The precept that location is key to the success of a business applies to art, and even to life itself: we thrive or wither depending on how nourishing our environment is.

Above all, don't lose hope

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 illusions about freedom plague them both.

Things didn't turn out the way they were suppsed to, but qhat can you do? You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.

At last I managed to haul it aboard. It was over three feet long. The bucket was useless. It would fit the dorado like a hat.

You bring joy and pain in equal measure- 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.

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.

Plan Number Three: Attack Him with All Available Weaponry. Ludicrous. I wasn't Tarzan. I was a puny, feeble, vegetarian life form.

I'm more preoccupied with furnishing my head than the place where I live. The most beautiful rooms I have entered have been empty ones.

surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosingn immobility as a means of transportation.

But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it.

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

El hecho de escoger la duda como filosofía de vida es como elegir la inmovilidad como forma de transporte.

Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans.

These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. 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. Meanwhile

I quite deliberately dressed wild animals in tame costumes of my imagination.

I don't know then. I wrote my book on the Holocaust without worrying about where the fucking bar code would go.