Quotes from Yann Martel

A movie will do in one second, with one image, what it will take a novelist at least a page to describe.

I kept one eye on the horizon, one eye on the other end of the lifeboat.

Any writer will be happy and good only if they know what they're doing and why they're doing it.

Zonder gekte zou geen enkele soort kunnen overleven.

I love my prayer rug. . . . because it helped me remember that the earth is the creation of God and sacred the same all over.

Scegliere il dubbio come filosofia di vita equivale ad eleggere l'immobilità a proprio mezzo di trasporto.

to be drunk on alcohol is disgraceful, but to be drunk on water is noble and ecstatic.

My greatest wish—other than salvation—was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time. Alas, there was no scripture in the lifeboat.

His presence was overwhelming, yet equally evident was the lithesome grace of it.

He became a champion napper.

I began to wait. My thoughts swung wildly. I was either fixed on practical details of immediate survival or transfixed by pain, weeping silently, my mouth open and my hands on my head.

I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful. I

My baptism was a slightly awkward affair. . . . The water trickled down my face and down my neck; though just a beakers worth, it had the refreshing effect of a monsoon rain.

Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.

What I had before me was a spectacle of wind and water, an earthquake of the senses, that even Hollywood couldn't orchestrate.

Reason is my prophet and it tells me that as a watch stops, so we die. It's the end.

People move because of the wear and tear of anxiety. Because of the gnawing feeling that no matter how hard they work their efforts will yield nothing, that what they build up in one year will be torn down in one day by others. Because of the impression that the future is blocked up, that they might do all right but not their children. Because of the feeling that nothing will change, that happiness and prosperity are possible only somewhere else.

I gave up trying to find out. Any knowledge I might gain was useless. I had no means of controlling where I was going - no rudder, no sails, no motor, some oars, but insufficient brawn.

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.

Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they've known for a great unknown beyond the horizon? Why climb this Mount Everest of formalities that makes you feel like a beggar? Why enter this jungle of foreignness where everything is new, strange and difficult? The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life.

I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape.

Then normal sank.

While Odo has mastered the simple human trick of making porridge, Peter has learned the difficult animal skill of doing nothing. He's learned to unshackle himself from the race of time and contemplate time itself. As far as he can tell, that's what Odo spends most of his time doing: being in time, like one sits by a river, watching the water go by. It's a lesson hard learned, just to sit there and be.

But religion is more than rite and ritual. There is what the rite and ritual stand for.