Quotes from Yann Martel

So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals of the story without animals?

Religion?" Mr. Kumar grinned broadly. "I don't believe in religion. Religion is darkness.

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

We are random animals. That is who we are, and we have only ourselves, nothing more--there is no greater relationship.

If there's only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it?

Nem! Nem! Nem! A szenvedésem igenis számít. Élni akarok. Muszáj belekevernem az életemet a világegyetem életébe. Az élet egy kémlelÅ'nyílás, az egyetlen pici út egy végtelenségbe – hogyan hagyhatnám ki ezt a kurta, sz?k pillantást, amit a világra vethetek? Nekem csak ez jutott!

A story is a wedding in which we listeners are the groom watching the bride coming up the aisle. It is together, in an act of imaginary consummation, that the story is born. This act wholly involves us, as any marriage would, and just as no marriage is exactly the same as another, so each of us interprets a story differently, feels for it differently. A story calls upon us...as individuals-and we like that. Stories benefit the human mind.

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.

Despite attending a nominally Christian school, I had not yet been inside a church—and I wasn't about to dare the deed now. I knew very little about the religion. It had a reputation for few gods and great violence. But good schools.

Everything in me, right down to the pores of my skin, was expressing joy.

Khi ta Ä'ã ch?u nhi?u Ä'au Ä'á»›n ? ??i, má»—i má»™t ná»—i Ä'au má»›i s? v?a n?ng trÄ©u mà cÅ©ng l?i ch?ng là gì.

Without a driver this bus is lost.

My life is like a memento more painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.

I would nearly go into convulsions of dismay at my stupidity.

Stories full of metaphors are by writers who play the language like a mandolin for our entertainment, novelists

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 thee passing shadow of a cloud.

Mamaji remembered, Father dreamed.

I can't understand how a man who seems never to read imaginative writing of any kind (novels, poetry, short stories, high-brow, middle-brow, low-brow, anything) can understand life, people, the world. I don't care if ordinary people read or not. It's not for me to say how people should live. But people who have power over me? I want them to read because their limited, impoverished dreams may become my nightmares.

I said nothing. It wasn't for fear of angering Mr. Kumar. I was more afraid that in a few words thrown out he might destroy something that I loved.

I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while.

That is Christianity at heart: a single miracle surrounded and sustained by stories, like an island surrounded by the sea.

Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love--but sometimes it was so hard to love. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up.

Hediger (1950) mantiene que «cuando dos animales se encuentran por primera vez, el que es capaz de intimidar al otro se definirá como el socialmente superior de los dos, de modo que una decisión social no siempre dependerá de una pelea; en ocasiones, bastará con un encuentro».

Bapu Ghandi said, All religions are true. I just want to love God, I blurted out, and looked down, red in the face.