Quotes from Yann Martel

My suffering left me sad and gloomy.

There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God... These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside.

I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality.

It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.

I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.

Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited.

Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.

My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.

I can well imagine an athiest's last words: White, white! L-L-Love! My God! - and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain, and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.

The paths to liberation are numerous, but the bank along the way is always the same, the Bank of Karma, where the liberation account of each of us is credited or debited depending on our actions.

Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror.

When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.

The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving.

The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar.

I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.

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 or the story without animals?' Mr. Okamoto: 'That's an interesting question?' Mr. Chiba: 'The story with animals.' Mr. Okamoto: 'Yes. The story with animals is the better story.' Pi Patel: 'Thank you. And so it goes with God.

High calls low and low calls high. I tell you, if you were in such dire straits as I was, you too would elevate your thoughts. The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar.

for everything has a trace of the divine in it.

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

As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound.

It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.

the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.

Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love.

My gratitude to him is as boundless as the Pacific ocean.