Quotes from Yann Martel

The reward for the watching eye and listening ear is great.

If Christ played 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.

I must say a word about fear. It's is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. it begins in your mind, always.

What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell.

Kalau kita, para warga negara, tidak memberikan dukungan kepada seniman-seniman kita, berarti kita telah mengorbankan imajinasi kita di altas realitas yang kejam, dan pada akhirnya kita jadi tidak percaya pada apapun, dan mimpi-mimpi kita tidak lagi berarti.

Kalau begitu, apa gunanya punya akal, Richard Parker? Apakah sekadar untuk memenuhi kebutuhan sehari-hari —- mencari makanan, pakaian, dan atap untuk berteduh? Kenapa akal tak bisa memberikan jawaban-jawaban yang lebih kompleks? Kenapa kita bisa menanyakan hal yang tak ada jawabannya? Buat apa punya jala begitu besar kalau sedikit sekali ikan yang bisa ditangkap?

I went to temple at crowded times when Brahmins were too distracted to come between me and God.

You see these guinea pigs? Well... they'er not dangerous.

Two blind people in two separate lifeboats meeting up in the Pacific–the coincidence seems a little far-fetched, no?

Under the pathologist's microscope, life and death fight in an illuminated circle in a sort of cellular bullfight. The pathologist's job is to find the bull among the matador cells

It's a joke in the zoo business, a weary joke, that the paperwork involved in trading a shrew weighs more than an elephant, that the paperwork involved in trading an elephant weighs more than a whale, and that you must never try to trade a whale, never.

life will defend itself no matter how smallit is

A very long sentence, anchored in solid nouns, with countless subordinate clauses, scores of adjectives and adverbs, and bold conjunctions that launched the sentence in a new direction--besides unexpected interludes--has finally, with a surprisingly quiet full stop, come to an end.

If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? [...] Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist.

There's no peace like the peace of an inner courtyard on a sunny day.

Change becomes a habit and habits are hard to change .

If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for?

He seems to be attracting religions the way a dog attracts fleas.

Let that be a reminder to you that the past is one thing, but what we make of it, the conclusions we draw, is another. History can be many things, depending on how we read it, just as the future can be many things, depending on how we live it. There is no inevitability to any historical occurrence, only what people will allow to take place. And it is by dreaming first that we get to new realities.

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent.

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

he found it where he should have looked first, on the Internet, which is a net indeed, one that can be cast further than the eye can see and be retrieved no matter how heavy the hall, its magical mesh never breaking under the strain but always bringing in the most amazing catch.

Ravi was right. Truly I was to be the next goat. I had a wet, trembling, half-drowned, heaving and coughing three-year-old adult Bengal tiger in my lifeboat. Richard Parker rose unsteadily to his feet on the tarpaulin, eyes blazing as they met mine, ears laid tight to his head, all weapons drawn. His head was the size and colour of the lifebuoy, with teeth. I turned around, stepped over the zebra and threw myself overboard.

Catholics have a reputation for severity, for judgment that comes down heavily.