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As For Fame, Fame Felt Like Nothing. Fame Was Not A Sensation Like Love Or Hunger Or Loneliness, Welling From Within And Invisible To The Outside Eye. It Was Rather Entirely External, Coming From The Minds Of Others. It Existed In The Way People Looked At Him Or Behaved Towards Him. In That, Being Famous Was No Different From Being Gay, Or Jewish, Or From A Visible Minority: You Are Who You Are, And Then People Project Onto You Some Notion They Have.

-Yann Martel

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As For Fame, Fame

Yann Martel

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As For Fame, Fame Felt Like Nothing. Fame Was Not A Sensation Like Love Or Hunger Or Loneliness, Welling From Within And Invisible To The Outside Eye. It Was Rather Entirely External, Coming From The Minds Of Others. It Existed In The Way People Looked At Him Or Behaved Towards Him. In That, Being Famous Was No Different From Being Gay, Or Jewish, Or From A Visible Minority: You Are Who You Are, And Then People Project Onto You Some Notion They Have.

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There Is Nothing More Satisfying Than Having A Sentence Fall Into Place In A Way You Feel Is Right, And Then Adding Another One And Then Another One. It's Extraordinarily Satisfying.

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Mockery Be Damned, My Urine Looked Delicious.

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...for Everything Has A Trace Of The Divine In It.

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High Calls Low And Low Calls High. I Tell You, If You Were In Such Dire Straits As I Was, You Too Would Elevate Your Thoughts. The Lower You Are, The Higher Your Mind Will Want To Soar.

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How True Is That Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention, How Very True.

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I Love Canada. Its A Wonderful Political Act Of Faith That Exists Atop A Breathtakingly Beautiful Land.

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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.

Everything Was Screaming: The Sea, The Wind, My Heart.

When You've Suffered A Great Deal In Life, Each Additional Pain Is Both Unbearable And Trifling.

If Literature Does One Thing, It Makes You More Empathetic By Making You Live Other Lives And Feel The Pain Of Others. Ideologues Don't Feel The Pain Of Others Because They Haven't Imaginatively Got Under Their Skins.

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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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That's What Fiction Is About, Isn't It, The Selective Transforming Of Reality? The Twisting Of It To Bring Out Its Essence?

It Is Life's Only True Opponent. Only Fear Can Defeat Life.

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The Lower You Are, The Higher Your Mind Will Want To Soar.

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No One Dies Of Nausea, But It Can Seriously Sap The Will To Live.

Japanese-owned Cargo Ship Tsimtsum, Flying Panamanian Flag, Sank July 2nd, 1977, In Pacific, Four Days Out Of Manila. Am In Lifeboat. Pi Patel My Name. Have Some Food, Some Water, But Bengal Tiger A Serious Problem. Please Advise Family In Winnepeg, Canada. Any Help Very Much Appreciated. Thank You.

I Explore It Now In The Only Place Left For It, My Memory.

My Alarm Clock During My Childhood Was A Pride Of Lions.

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.

In A Movie, You Need Good Actors, Whereas In A Book, You Don't, Unless You Have A Really Bad Imagination. In A Book, Your Imagination Will Do The Acting For You. Also, The Process Of Revelation Is Often Different. Tension Is Achieved In A Different Way.

If You Stumble About Believability, What Are You Living For? Love Is Hard To Believe, Ask Any Lover. Life Is Hard To Believe, Ask Any Scientist. God Is Hard To Believe, Ask Any Believer. What Is Your Problem With Hard To Believe?

If We, Citizens, Do Not Support Our Artists, Then We Sacrifice Our Imagination On The Altar Of Crude Reality And We End Up Believing In Nothing And Having Worthless Dreams.

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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I Couldn't Get Him Out Of My Head. Still Can't. I Spent Three Solid Days Thinking About Him. The More He Bothered Me, The Less I Coul Forget Him. And The More I Learned About Him, The Less I Wanted To Leave Him.

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Most Of Us Get Our History Through Story.

My Greatest Wish - Other Than Salvation - Was To Have A Book.

You Can Get Used To Anything - Haven't I Already Said That? Isn't That What All Survivors Say?

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Isn't Telling About Something-using Words, English Or Japanese-already Something Of An Invention? Isn't Just Looking Upon This World Already Something Of An Invention?

I 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.

Irrational Numbers

The Lower You Are, The Higher Your Mind Will Want To Soar. It Was Natural That, Bereft And Desperate As I Was, In The Throes Of Unremitting Suffering. I Should Turn To God

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.

Art Is A Gift: You Create And Then You Give Away. How Readers Receive That Gift Is Their Business. If They Hate It, That’s Their Response To It. Others Respond By Liking It. Either Way, That Is Their Interaction With The Book, Which Is No Longer Mine.

Reality Is How We Interpret It. Imagination And Volition Play A Part In That Interpretation. Which Means That All Reality Is To Some Extent A Fiction.

A Movie Will Do In One Second, With One Image, What It Will Take A Novelist At Least A Page To Describe.

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.

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.

We Always See The Holocaust In Terms Of Black-and-white Images, Barking Germans, Cowering Jews. We Know Very Well-known Fixed Places Like Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka, And Beltzec. Instead, War Can Live In A Couple Having A Spat, When We Say, "that Was A Real War." We Very Rarely Have The Holocaust Live In The Terms Of Today. And I Think That's A Problem, Because It Becomes Ancient History.

I Love Canada...it Is A Great Country Much Too Cold For Good Sense, Inhabited By Compassionate, Intelligent People With Bad Hairdos.

You Must Take Life The Way It Comes At You And Make The Best Of It.

Oncoming Death Is Terrible Enough, But Worse Still Is Oncoming Death With Time To Spare, Time In Which All The Happiness That Was Yours And All The Happiness That Might Have Been Yours Becomes Clear To You. You See With Utter Lucidity All That You Are Losing.

I Felt I Was Beating A Rainbow To Death

A Great Literary Work Can Be Completely, Completely Unpredictable. Which Can Sometimes Make Them Very Hard To Read, But It Gives Them A Great Originality.

Survival Starts By Paying Attention To What Is Close At Hand And Immediate. To Look Out With Idle Hope Is Tantamount To Dreaming One's Life Away.

I Can Only Tell My Story, What You Believe Is Up To You.

Zoo Is An Artificial Territory, An Approximation. Civilization Is Our Natural Territory.

I Think Art Comes From Some Sense Of Discomfort With The World, Some Sense Of Not Quite Fitting With It.

The Tennis Challenger Starts Strong But Soon Loses Confidence In His Playing. The Champion Racks Up The Games. But In The Final Set, When The Challenger Has Nothing Left To Lose, He Becomes Relaxed Again, Insouciant, Daring. Suddenly He's Playing Like The Devil And The Champion Must Work Hard To Get Those Last Points.

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.

It Was As Unbelievable As The Moon Catching Fire.

A House Is A Compressed Territory Where Our Basic Needs Can Be Fulfilled Close By And Safely.

To Lose A Brother Is To Lose Someone With Whom You Can Share The Experience Of Growing Old, Who Is Supposed To Bring You A Sister-in-law And Nieces And Nephews, Creatures Who People The Tree Of Your Life And Give It New Branches. To Lose Your Father Is To Lose The One Whose Guidance And Help You Seek, Who Supports You Like A Tree Trunk Supports Its Branches. To Lose Your Mother, Well, That Is Like Losing The Sun Above You. It Is Like Losing--i'm Sorry, I Would Rather Not Go On.

Socially Inferior Animals Are The Ones That Make The Most Strenuous, Resourceful Efforts To Get To Know Their Keepers. They Prove To Be The Ones Most Faithful To Them…it Is A Fact Commonly Known In The Trade.

I Did Not Count The Days Or The Weeks Or The Months. Time Is An Illusion That Only Makes Us Pant. I Survived Because I Forgot Even The Very Notion Of Time.

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!

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.

A Work Of Art Works Because It Is True, Not Because It Is Real.

It's Amazing How Willpower Can Build Walls.

Animals In The Wild Lead Lives Of Compulsion And Necessity Within An Unforgiving Social Hierarchy In An Environment Where The Supply Of Fear Is High And The Supply Of Food Is Low And Where Territory Must Constantly Be Defended And Parasites Forever Endured.

Social Hierarchy

If You Are Pitched Into Misery, Remember That Your Days On This Earth Are Counted And You Might As Well Make The Best Of Those You Have Left.

It's Important In Life To Conclude Things Properly. Only Then Can You Let Go.

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A Realization That The Founding Principle Of Existence Is What We Call Love, Which Works Itself Out Sometimes Not Clearly, Not Cleanly, Not Immediately, Nonetheless Ineluctably.

Don’t You Bully Me With Your Politeness!

The Animals Might Embody Certain Traits. We Think Of Tigers As Being Ferocious, Etc. But To My Mind, It Was The Other Way Around: The Humans Embodied Certain Animal Traits.

Life On A Lifeboat Isn’t Much Of A Life. It Is Like An End Game In Chess, A Game With Few Pieces. The Elements Couldn’t Be More Simple, Nor The Stakes Higher.

I Preferred To Set Off And Perish In Search Of My Own Kind Than To Live A Lonely Half-life Of Physical Comfort And Spiritual Death On This Murderous Island.

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.

It Is True That Those We Meet Can Change Us, Sometimes So Profoundly That We Are Not The Same Afterwards, Even Unto Our Names.

Life Of Pi Book

Christianity Is A Religion In A Rush.

God Is Universal," Spluttered The Priest. The Imam Nodded Strong Approval. "there Is Only One God." "and With Their One God Muslims Are Always Causing Troubles And Provoking Riots. The Proof Of How Bad Islam Is, Is How Uncivilized Muslims Are,: Pronounced The Pandit. "says The Slave-driver Of The Cast System," Huffed The Imam. "hindus Enslave People And Worship Dressed-up Dolls." "they Are Golden Calf Lovers. They Kneel Before The Cows," The Priest Chimed In. "while Christians Kneel Before A White Man! They Are Flunkies Of A Foreign God. They Are Nightmare Of All Nonwhite People.

We Believe What We See.’...what Do You Do When You’re In The Dark?

Words Of Divine Consciousness: Moral Exaltation; Lasting Feelings Of Elevation, Elation, Joy; A Quickening Of The Moral Sense, Which Strikes One As More Important Than An Intellectual Understanding Of Things; An Alignment Of The Universe Along Moral Lines, Not Intellectual Ones; A Realization That The Founding Principle Of Existence Is What We Call Love, Which Works Itself Out Sometimes Not Clearly, Not Cleanly, Not Immediately, Nonetheless Ineluctably.

Artists Invent Things As A Way Of Telling The Truth.

Telling The Truth

How Do You Live With Evil? Art Is Traditionally - Certainly With My Secular Background - The Answer, But Art Is Very Self-referential, Whereas Religion Claims To Go Beyond The Bounds Of Human Existence.

It's Important In Life To Conclude Things Properly. Only Then Can You Let Go. Otherwise You Are Left With Words You Should Have Said But Never Did, And Your Heart Is Heavy With Remorse.

My Greatest Wish — Other Than Salvation — Was To Have A Book. A Long Book With A Never-ending Story. One I Could Read Again And Again, With New Eyes And A Fresh Understanding Each Time.

It Is A Vast Country, So That Inspires You. It's Also The Greatest Hotel On Earth: It Welcomes People From Everywhere. It's A Good Country To Write From Because In Many Ways Canada Is The World.

Christianity Stretches Back Through The Ages, But In Essence It Exists Only At One Time: Right Now.

Why Make Dirty What Is Beautiful, Spoil What Is Perfect? Love.

When The Course Of Experience Made Me See That There Is No Saviour And No Special Grace, No Remission Beyond The Human, That Pain Is To Be Endured And Fades, If It Fades, Only With Time, Then God Became Nothing To Me But A Dyslexic Dog, With Neither Bark Nor Bite.

There Are Always Those Who Take It Upon Themselves To Defend God... These People Fail To Realize That It Is On The Inside That God Must Be Defended, Not On The Outside.

For Evil In The Open Is But Evil From Within That Has Been Let Out.

I Have Nothing To Say Of My Working Life, Only That A Tie Is A Noose, And Inverted Though It Is, It Will Hang A Man Nonetheless If He's Not Careful.

I've Never Forgotten Him. 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. I Still Cannot Understand How He Could Abandon Me So Unceremoniously, Without Any Sort Of Goodbye, Without Looking Back Even Once. The Pain Is Like An Axe That Chops My Heart.

I Am Not A Particularly Natural Writer. I Am Not A Person Who Can Write In Paragraphs The Way Some Writers Do. For Me, It's Sentence By Sentence, Sometimes Word-by-word. And I Revise Constantly. It's A Very Laborious Process, But I Love Doing It.

We Commonly Say In The Trade That The Most Dangerous Animal In A Zoo Is Man.

Christianity Is A Religion In A Rush. Look At The World Created In Seven Says. Even On A Symbolic Lovel, That's Creation In Frenzy.

It Is Simple And Brutal: A Person Can Get Used To Anything, Even To Killing.

My Gratitude To Him Is As Boundless As The Pacific Ocean.

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.

Just Beyond The Ticket Booth Father Had Painted On A Wall In Bright Red Letters The Question: Do You Know Which Is The Most Dangerous Animal In The Zoo? An Arrow Pointed To A Small Curtain. There Were So Many Eager, Curious Hands That Pulled At The Curtain That We Had To Replace It Regularly. Behind It Was A Mirror.

The Three Religions Because I Wanted To Discuss Faith, Not Organized Religion, So Wanted To Relativize Organized Religion By Having Pi Practice Three. I Would Have Like Pi To Be A Jew, Too, To Practice Judaism, But There Are Two Religions That Are Explicitly Incompatible: Christianity And Judaism. Where One Begins, The Other Ends, According To Christians, And Where One Endures, The Other Strays, According To Jews.

In A Healthy Individual, A Broken Bone That Has Healed Properly Is Strongest Where It Was Once Broken. You Have Not Lost Any Life, Henry Told Himself. You Will Still Get Your Fair Share Of Years. Yet The Quality Of His Life Changed. Once You've Been Struck By Violence, You Acquire Companions That Never Leave You Entirely: Suspicion, Fear, Anxiety, Despair, Joylessness. The Natural Smile Is Taken From You And The Natural Pleasures You Once Enjoyed Lose Their Appeal.

So Tell Me, Since It Makes No Factual Difference To You And You Can't Prove The Question Either Way, Which Story Do You Prefer? Which Is The Better Story, The Story With Animals Or The Story Without Animals?' Mr. Okamoto: 'that's An Interesting Question?' Mr. Chiba: 'the Story With Animals.' Mr. Okamoto: 'yes. The Story With Animals Is The Better Story.' Pi Patel: 'thank You. And So It Goes With God.

Life And Death Live And Die In Exactly The Same Spot, The Body. It Is From There That Both Babies And Cancers Are Born.

I Suppose In The End, The Whole Of Life Becomes An Act Of Letting Go, But What Always Hurts The Most Is Not Taking A Moment To Say Goodbye.

A Movie Tends To Box You In, At Least As Far As The Aesthetics. You Have An Incredibly Kinetic Experience, Which Is The Joy Of Cinema.

Fanatics Do Not Have Faith - They Have Belief. With Faith You Let Go. You Trust. Whereas With Belief You Cling.

I Find That Movies Tend To Fix The Aesthetics Of A Story In People's Minds.

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.

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.

Was It The Forgetfulness Of Old Age Or Personal Incapacity That Made The Man Able To Say Please But Not Thank You?

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.

To My Mind, Faith Is Like Being In The Sun. When You Are In The Sun, Can You Avoid Creating A Shadow? Can You Shake That Area Of Darkness That Clings To You, Always Shaped Like You, As If Constantly To Remind You Of Yourself? You Can’t. This Shadow Is Doubt. And It Goes Wherever You Go As Long As You Stay In The Sun. And Who Wouldn’t Want To Be In The Sun?

[the Taxidermist Is] A Historian, Dealing With An Animal's Past; The Zookeeper Is A Politician, Dealing With An Animal's Present; And Everyone Else Is A Citizen Who Must Decide On That Animal's Future (...) The Indifference Of The Many, Combined With The Active Hatred Of The Few, Has Sealed The Fate Of Animals.

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