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 MARTELI wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain. I was sixteen years old, a harmless boy, bookish and religious, and now I had blood on my hands. It’s a terrible burden to carry. All sentient life is sacred.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you Richard Parker!
YANN MARTEL -
Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love.
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Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life.
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I had to stop hoping so much that a ship would rescue me. I should not count on outside help. Survival had to start with me.
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You can get used to anything – haven’t I already said that? Isn’t that what all survivors say?
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At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far.
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Music is a bird’s answer to the noise and heaviness of words. It puts the mind in a state of exhilarated speechlessness.
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My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.
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For fear, real fear such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it.
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Christianity is a religion in a rush. Look at the world created in seven says. Even on a symbolic lovel, that’s creation in frenzy.
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Much hostile and aggressive behaviour among animals is the expression of social insecurity.
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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!
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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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There is no doubt in my mind that that feral giraffes and feral hippos have been living in Tokyo for generations without seeing a soul.
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We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.
YANN MARTEL