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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.

Yann Martel

Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life.
YANN MARTEL

Life Lifeboat
People always seek to compare. They can take the new, but only if it is somehow connected to the familiar.
YANN MARTEL

Connected Men People Sea
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.
YANN MARTEL

Country Reading Reality
I find that movies tend to fix the aesthetics of a story in people’s minds.
YANN MARTEL

Mind People Stories
First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first.
YANN MARTEL

Firsts Fit Wonder
Mockery be damned, my urine looked delicious.
YANN MARTEL

Delicious Mockery.Urine
The presence of God is the finest of rewards.
YANN MARTEL

Finest God Presence Rewards
Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.
YANN MARTEL

Beautiful Jealous Life
I wept like a child. It was not because I was overcome at having survived my ordeal, though I was. Nor was it the presence of my brothers and sisters, though that too was very moving.
YANN MARTEL

Brother Children Moving Presence
Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher.
YANN MARTEL

Element Games Simple
You can get used to anything – haven’t I already said that? Isn’t that what all survivors say?
YANN MARTEL

Said Survivor Used
Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love – but sometimes it was so hard to love.
YANN MARTEL

Faith Go God Letting Opening Up
I have a story that will make you believe in God.
YANN MARTEL

Believe God Stories
My gratitude to him is as boundless as the Pacific ocean.
YANN MARTEL

Grateful Gratitude Ocean
We always see the Holocaust in terms of black-and-white images, barking Germans, cowering Jews.
YANN MARTEL

Couple Real War
Can there be any happiness greater than the happiness of salvation?
YANN MARTEL

Greater Happiness Salvation

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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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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Popular Authors

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