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 MARTELI 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.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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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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You bring joy and pain in equal measure. Joy because you are with me, but pain because it wont be for long.
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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.
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Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans.
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He’s a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.
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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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Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.
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I have a fierce will to live. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others – and I am one of those – never give up. We fight and fight and fight.
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Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it’s true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths.
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First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first.
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When you’ve suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.
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It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go.
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I cannot think of a better way to spread the faith. No thundering from a pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book of scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little girl’s kiss on your cheek.
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The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.
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We always see the Holocaust in terms of black-and-white images, barking Germans, cowering Jews.
YANN MARTEL