Yann Martel Quotes - Page 9

I explore it now in the only place left for it, my memory.

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.

Religion?" Mr Kumar grinned broadly. "I don't believe in religion. Religion is darkness.

Gloom is but a shadow of a cloud passing by

My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.

science can only take you so far and then you have to leap

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.

In my youth, it was my good luck to have a few good teachers, men and women, who came into my head and lit a match.

My alarm clock during my childhood was a pride of lions.

Books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play baseball or soccer, and mine was the gangly, unathletic kid that no one wanted on their team.

You may not believe in life, but I don't believe in death. Move on!

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity – it’s envy.

No one dies of nausea, but it can seriously sap the will to live.

Most of us get our history through story.

Books are something social - a writer speaking to a reader - so I think making the reading of a book the center of a social event, the meeting of a book club, is a brilliant idea.

My ears were full. Nothing more, not one more sound, could push into them and be registered.

My zoology thesis was a functional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. I chose the sloth because its demeanour - calm, quiet and introspective - did something to soothe my shattered self.

The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving.

We are all born like Catholics, aren't we—in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?

When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.

It was a huge zoo, spread over numberless acres, big enough to require a train to explore it, though it seemed to get smaler as I grew older, train included. Now it's so small it fits in my head.

Dawn came and matters were worse for it. Because now, emerging from the darkness, I could see, what before I had only felt, the great curtains of rain crashing down on me from towering heights and the waves that threw a path over me and trod me underfoot one after another.

Come aboard if your destination is oblivion- it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat if you want. But it's a sad view.

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.

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.