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 MARTELTo 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.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you Richard Parker!
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We always see the Holocaust in terms of black-and-white images, barking Germans, cowering Jews.
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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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Afterwards, when it’s all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?
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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 always those who take it upon themselves to defend God… These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside.
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Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love.
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I know zoos are no longer in people’s good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.
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Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.
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Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind, my heart.
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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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A movie will do in one second, with one image, what it will take a novelist at least a page to describe.
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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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Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart.
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Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life.
YANN MARTEL