Yann Martel Quotes

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.

"Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time." Page 212.

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

One might even argue that if an animal could choose with intelligence, it would opt for living in a zoo, since the major difference between a zoo and the wild is the absence of parasites and enemies and the abundance of food in the first, and their respective abundance and scarcity in the second. Think about it yourself. Would you rather be put up at the Ritz with free room service and unlimited access to a doctor or be homeless without a soul to care for you?...

But I don't insist. I don't mean to defend zoos. Close them all down if you want (and let us hope that what wildlife remains can survive in what is left of the natural world). I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.

Here was irrefutable proof that he was using the Holocaust to speak of the extermination of animal life. Doomed creatures that could not speak for themselves were being given the voice of a most articulate people who had been similarly doomed. He was seeing the tragic fate of animals through the tragic fate of Jews. The Holocaust as allegory.

First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first.

I should not count on outside help. Survival had to start with me.

Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can get.

Don’t you bully me with your politeness!

Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field.

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.

Some of us give up on life with only a resigned sigh. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others-and I am one of those-never give up. We fight and fight and fight. We fight no matter the cost of battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the very end. It's not a question of courage. It's something constitutional, an inability to let go.

Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.

Things didn't turn out the way they used to, but what can you do? You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.

"If you went to a home, kicked down the front door, chased the people who lived there out into the street and said, "Go! You are free! Free as a bird! Go! Go!" — do you think they would shout and dance for joy? They wouldn't. Birds are not free. The people you've just evicted would sputter, "With what right do you throw us out? This is our home. We own it. We have lived here for years. We're calling the police, you scoundrel.