Yann Martel - Life of Pi (2001)

110 Sourced Quotes

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

Yann Martel
Books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play baseball or soccer, and mine was the gangly, unathletic kid that no one wanted on their team.

Yann Martel
Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.

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 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.

Yann Martel
It was Richard Parker who calmed me down. It is the irony of this story that the one who scared me witless to start with was the very same who brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even wholeness.

Yann Martel
That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?

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

Yann Martel
How long does it take for a broken spirit to kill a body that has food, water and shelter?

Yann Martel
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.

Yann Martel
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.

Yann Martel
"Bapu Gandhi said, 'All religions are true.' I just want to love God," I blurted out, and looked down, red in the face.

Yann Martel
Progress is unstoppable. It is a drumbeat to which we must all march. Technology helps and good ideas spread – these are two lows of nature. If you don't let technology help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaurhood! I am utterly convinced of this.

Yann Martel
Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart.

Yann Martel
Socially inferior animals are the ones that make the most strenuous, resourceful efforts to get to know their keepers. They prove to be the ones most faithful to them…it is a fact commonly known in the trade.

Yann Martel
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.

Yann Martel
Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when they are not preoccupied with science.

Yann Martel
My ears were full. Nothing more, not one more sound, could push into them and be registered.

Yann Martel
I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.

Yann Martel
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.

Yann Martel
I was weeping because Richard Parker left me so unceremoniously. What a terrible thing it is to botch the farewell. I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things meaningful shape.

Yann Martel
A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.

Yann Martel
The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table. That which sustains the universe beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression, is the same thing. The finite within the infinite, the infinite within the finite.

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

Yann Martel
Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness—how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I've got!

Yann Martel
I cannot think of a better way to spread the faith. No thundering from a pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book of scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little girl's kiss on your cheek.

Yann Martel
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.

Yann Martel
We are all born like Catholics, aren't we—in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?

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

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

Yann Martel
I preferred to set off and perish in search of my own kind than to live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and spiritual death on this murderous island.

Yann Martel