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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.

Yann Martel

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
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 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.
YANN MARTEL

Blood Boys Religious
You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.
YANN MARTEL

Cheer Graduation Inspiring
I 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.
YANN MARTEL

Christians Incompatible Practice Religions
Don’t you bully me with your politeness!
YANN MARTEL

Bully People Politeness
Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.
YANN MARTEL

Company Madness Misery
How true is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.
YANN MARTEL

Invention Mother True Very
Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life.
YANN MARTEL

Life Lifeboat
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
The dorado did the most extraordinary thing as it died: it began to flash all kinds of colours in rapid succession. Blue, green, red, gold, and violet flickered and shimmered neon-like on its surface as it struggled. I felt I was beating a rainbow to death.
YANN MARTEL

Began Extraordinary Kinds Shimmered Succession
I went about the job in a direct way. I took the hatchet in both my hands and vigorously beat the fish on the head with the hammerhead (I still didn’t have the stomach to use the sharp edge).
YANN MARTEL

Blue Hands Jobs Stomach Vigorously
I go to mass every Sunday, but love going to mosques too. Muslims pray in a beautiful way.
YANN MARTEL

Beautiful Mosques Sunday
I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point or a lion merely turning its head. But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it.
YANN MARTEL

Language Perfection Sea Water
Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field-but they’re all we have.
YANN MARTEL

Dancing Toads Trying
I know zoos are no longer in people’s good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.
YANN MARTEL

Grace People Zoos

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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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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