We think we live in a global village. We don’t. The world is a big and beautiful and incredibly varied place. It can only be known locally, with your two feet on the ground. We should stick to our own gardens, as Voltaire said.
YANN MARTELI 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.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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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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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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It’s amazing how willpower can build walls.
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Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness–how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I’ve got!
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Afterwards, when it’s all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?
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It was as unbelievable as the moon catching fire.
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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.
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Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them — and then they leap.
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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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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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I have a story that will make you believe in God.
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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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Sitting in an office for TOO long is not natural, perhaps, so that’s why we should change it. I didn’t say that out-and-out capitalism, which reduces humanity to dollar figures, is natural.
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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 and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body. It is from there that both babies and cancers are born.
YANN MARTEL