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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.

Yann Martel

In a healthy individual, a broken bone that has healed properly is strongest where it was once broken. You have not lost any life, Henry told himself. You will still get your fair share of years. Yet the quality of his life changed.
YANN MARTEL

Broken Properly Taken Years
I am reminded of a story of Lord Krishna when he was a cowherd. Every night he invites the milkmaids to dance with him in the forest. They come and they dance. The night is dark, the fire in their midst roars and crackles, the beat of the music gets ever faster.
YANN MARTEL

Crackle Faster Forest Girl Jealous Music Sweet
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
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

Dream Hands Mistake
I chose the name Pi because it’s an irrational number (one with no discernable pattern). Yet scientists use this irrational number to come to a “rational” understanding of the universe. To me, religion is a bit like that, “irrational” yet with it we come together we come to a sound understanding of the universe.
YANN MARTEL

Irrational Names Numbers Understanding
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.
YANN MARTEL

Generations Seeing Shock Soul
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.
YANN MARTEL

Animal Stories Together
I am not a particularly natural writer. I am not a person who can write in paragraphs the way some writers do. For me, it’s sentence by sentence, sometimes word-by-word. And I revise constantly. It’s a very laborious process, but I love doing it.
YANN MARTEL

Laborious Process Sometimes Way Writing
We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.
YANN MARTEL

Animals Men Zoos
Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans.
YANN MARTEL

Animal Important Training
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
Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love.
YANN MARTEL

Beautiful Beauty Dirty
And in between the two, in between the sky and the sea, were all the winds. And there were all the nights and all the moons. To be a castaway is to be a point perpetually at the centre of a circle.
YANN MARTEL

Blue Castaway Moon Night
It was as unbelievable as the moon catching fire.
YANN MARTEL

Catching Fire Moon
The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.
YANN MARTEL

Boredom Opposites Swings
Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.
YANN MARTEL

Beats Reason Risk

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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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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Popular Authors

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