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.
YANN MARTELHindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat wearing Muslims.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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If you don’t have dreams, how do you maneuver reality? Where do you get the ideas to change reality if not from dreams?
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We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.
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I felt I was beating a rainbow to death
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Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love.
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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.
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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.
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Christianity is a religion in a rush.
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Artists invent things as a way of telling the truth.
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As much as I love movies, it would be presumptuous of me to think that I know how to make one.
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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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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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For fear, real fear such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it.
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You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.
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At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far.
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Just do it. Get it down on the page. Work hard. And then let go. Ask yourself why you want to write. You have to be clear about that.
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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.
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You may not believe in life, but I don’t believe in death. Move on!
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Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat wearing Muslims.
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Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed.
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I can well imagine an athiest’s last words: “White, white! L-L-Love! My God!” – and the deathbed leap of faith.
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Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.
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I was giving up. I would have given up – if a voice hadn’t made itself heard in my heart. The voice said “I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare.
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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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It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.
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You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better.
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I’m not a consumer. I hate buying clothes. I don’t have a mobile. I just don’t need things. I don’t like things.
YANN MARTEL