…for everything has a trace of the divine in it.
YANN MARTELI would have like PI to be a Jew, too, to practice Judaism, but there are two religions that are explicitly incompatible: Christianity and Judaism. Where one begins, the other ends, according to Christians, and where one endures, the other strays, according to Jews.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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It’s hard to visualize James Bond without seeing one of the actors who played him. And it’s hard to visualize Harry Potter without seeing Daniel Radcliffe. A movie is so visually powerful, so overwhelming, that it tends to crowd out how you might have imagined things.
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science can only take you so far and then you have to leap
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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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I have read that there are two fears that cannot be trained out of us: the startle reaction upon hearing an unexpected noise, and vertigo.
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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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I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.
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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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He’s a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.
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Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life.
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The three religions because I wanted to discuss faith, not organized religion, so wanted to relativize organized religion by having Pi practice three.
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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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For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out.
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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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To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures who people the tree of your life and give it new branches.
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I find that movies tend to fix the aesthetics of a story in people’s minds.
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My greatest wish – other than salvation – was to have a book.
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I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.
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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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A zoo is not an ideal place for an animal – of course the best place for a chimp is the wilds of Tanzania – but a good zoo is a decent, acceptable place.
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I’m not a consumer. I hate buying clothes. I don’t have a mobile. I just don’t need things. I don’t like things.
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If you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside down and shook it you would be amazed at the animals that fall out: badgers, wolves, boa constrictors, crocodiles, ostriches, baboons, capybaras, wild boars, leopards, manatees, ruminants, in untold numbers.
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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 would like to add a third, to wit, the rapid and direct approch of a known killer
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Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.
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In art, something comes of nothing. Out of the thin air and the ether, you create a story. And that is intensely satisfying.
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Much hostile and aggressive behaviour among animals is the expression of social insecurity.
YANN MARTEL