Quotes About Perspective

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.

A movie is so visually powerful, so overwhelming, that it tends to crowd out how you might have imagined things.

Instead of coconut yam kootu, why not boiled beef tongue with a mustard sauce?" "That sounds non-veg.

When the course of experience made me see that there is no saviour and no special grace, no remission beyond the human, that pain is to be endured and fades, if it fades, only with time, then God became nothing to me but a dyslexic dog, with neither bark nor bite.

When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.

The word isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?

The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists.

A világ nem egyszer?en olyan, amilyen. Olyan, amilyennek felfogjuk, nem? S azzal, hogy valamit felfogunk, valamit hozzá is teszünk, nem igaz? Nem válik-e ettÅ'l történetté az élet is?

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?

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!

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.

If it happened, it happened. Why should it have to mean anything?

The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? (p. 302)

in fact she was not so wrong; that Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims.

She heard "Hairless Christians", and that is what they were to her for many years. When I corrected her, I told her that in fact she was not so wrong; that Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims.

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.

Do you understand? You've been praying to a crucified chimpanzee all these years. Your Son of Man is not a god-he's just an ape on a cross!

and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful.

For the first time I noticed—as I would notice repeatedly during my ordeal, between one throe of agony and the next—that my suffering was taking place in a grand setting. I saw my suffering for what it was, finite and insignificant, and I was still. My suffering did not fit anywhere, I realized. And I could accept this. It was all right.

I believed him. (Ravi was a merciless teaser. The first time he called Mamaji "Mr. Fish" to my face I left a banana peel in his bed.)

The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?

You've got the wrong fellow. You may not believe in life, but I don't believe in death. Move on!

Certainly, anyone whom I've witnessed, who has gone through something horrible and life-changing, has a sense of ironic humor, or an ability to look at the peculiarities of the world and find humor in it.

I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows there's no such thing as the Christian world and the Islamic world. That's all crap.