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1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

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

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More Yann Martel Quotes

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  There are animals we haven’t stopped by. Don’t think they’re harmless. Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.

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• 

  Once you’ve been struck by violence, you acquire companions that never leave you entirely: Suspicion, Fear, Anxiety, Despair, Joylessness. The natural smile is taken from you and the natural pleasures you once enjoyed lose their appeal.

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• 

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

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• 

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

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• 

  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.

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• 

  You bring joy and pain in equal measure. Joy because you are with me, but pain because it wont be for long.

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• 

  Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you Richard Parker!

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• 

  All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.

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• 

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

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• 

  It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.

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• 

  I have a fierce will to live. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others – and I am one of those – never give up. We fight and fight and fight.

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• 

  Much hostile and aggressive behaviour among animals is the expression of social insecurity.

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• 

  Religion is just an alternate way of reading reality – you read material reality, and then you add on an extra layer of religiosity that deepens that understanding of reality. Some countries have lost that capacity, or dismissed it or marginalized it.

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• 

  As much as I love movies, it would be presumptuous of me to think that I know how to make one.

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• 

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

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• 

  Stories–individual stories, family stories, national stories–are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.

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