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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. So You Must Fight Hard To Express It. You Must Fight Hard To Shine The Light Of Words Upon It. Because If You Don't, If Your Fear Becomes A Wordless Darkness That You Avoid, Perhaps Even Manage To Forget, You Open Yourself To Further Attacks Of Fear Because You Never Truly Fought The Opponent Who Defeated You.

-Yann Martel

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For Fear, Real Fear

Yann Martel

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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. So You Must Fight Hard To Express It. You Must Fight Hard To Shine The Light Of Words Upon It. Because If You Don't, If Your Fear Becomes A Wordless Darkness That You Avoid, Perhaps Even Manage To Forget, You Open Yourself To Further Attacks Of Fear Because You Never Truly Fought The Opponent Who Defeated You.

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

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.

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?

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

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?

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.

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.

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Truth Is A Nebulous Thing. There Are Certain, Definite Truths, But The Truth Of Our Lives Goes Far Beyond Facts.

Atheists Are My Brothers And Sisters Of A Different Faith, And Every Word They Speak Speaks Of Faith. Like Me, They Go As Far As The Legs Of Reason Will Carry Them -- And Then They Leap.

Bapu Gandhi Said, ‘all Religions Are True.’ I Just Want To Love God.

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.

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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.

Gloom Is But A Shadow Of A Cloud Passing By

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.

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.

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 Was As Unbelievable As The Moon Catching Fire.

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

If You Don't Have Dreams, How Do You Maneuver Reality? Where Do You Get The Ideas To Change Reality If Not From Dreams?

Jesus, Mary, Muhammad And Vishnu, How Good To See You Richard Parker!

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.

My Next Book - Each One While I'm Working On It - Dances In My Mind And Thrills Me At Every Turn. If It Didn't, Why Would I Write It?

It Is Pointless To Say That This Or That Night Was The Worst Of My Life. I Have So Many Bad Nights To Choose From That I've Made None The Champion.

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

Sitting In An Office For Too Long Is Not Natural, Perhaps, So That's Why We Should Change It. I Didn't Say That Out-and-out Capitalism, Which Reduces Humanity To Dollar Figures, Is Natural.

There's Nothing Like The Unimaginable To Make People Believe.

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 Turned Around, Stepped Over The Zebra And Threw Myself Overboard.

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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.

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

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

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

I Have A Story That Will Make You Believe In God.

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.

Mockery Be Damned, My Urine Looked Delicious.

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.

Words Are Cold, Muddy Toads Trying To Understand Sprites Dancing In A Field-but They're All We Have.

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.

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

The Idea Of A Flip Book Still Really Appeals To Me. That Idea Of Fiction And Non-fiction.

How Bitterly Glad I Am To See You. You Bring Joy And Pain In Equal Measure. Joy Because You Are With Me, But Pain Because It Won't Be For Long. What Do You Know About The Sea? Nothing. What Do I Know About The Sea? Nothing. Without A Driver This Bus Is Lost. Our Lives Are Over. 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. Oh Enough Of This Disembling. Let Me Say Plainly: I Love You, I Love You, I Love You. I Love You, I Love You, I Love You. Not The Spiders, Please.

Music Is A Bird's Answer To The Noise And Heaviness Of Words. It Puts The Mind In A State Of Exhilarated Speechlessness.

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 Know What You Want. You Want A Story That Won't Surprise You. That Will Confirm What You Already Know. That Won't Make You See Higher Or Further Or Differently. You Want A Flat Story. An Immobile Story. You Want Dry, Yeastless Factuality.

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

Why Do People Move? What Makes Them Uproot And Leave Everything They've Known For A Great Unknown Beyond The Horizon? ... The Answer Is The Same The World Over: People Move In The Hope Of A Better Life.

...if You Fall Into A Lion's Pit, The Reason The Lion Will Tear You To Pieces Is Not Because It's Hungry-be Assured, Zoo Animals Are Amply Fed-or Because It's Bloodthirsty, But Because You've Invaded It's Territory.

To Me, The Research Is A Way Of Exploring What It Means To Be Alive.

Don’t You Bully Me With Your Politeness!

Life On A Lifeboat Isn't Much Of A Life. It Is Like An End Game In Chess, A Game With A Few Pieces. The Elements Couldn't Be More Simple, Nor The Stakes Higher. Physically It Is Extraordinarily Arduous, And Morally It Is Killing...you Get Your Happiness Where You Can. You Reach A Point Where You're At The Bottom Of Hell, Yet You Have Your Arms Crossed And A Smile On Your Face, And You Feel You're The Luckiest Person On Earth. Why? Because At Your Feet You Have A Tiny Dead Fish

Much Hostile And Aggressive Behaviour Among Animals Is The Expression Of Social Insecurity.

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.

Just As Art Brings You To Another Place, So Does Religion - And To Ask Questions Of Factuality Tends To Reduce Both. If You Say You Were Inspired By A Novel, That Implies That Your Book Is A Work Of Fiction.

For The First Time I Noticed - As I Would Notice Repeatedly During My Ordeal, Between One Throe Of Agony And The Next - That My Suffering Was Taking Place In A Grand Setting. I Saw My Suffering For What It Was, Finite And Insignificant, And I Was Still. My Suffering Did Not Fit Anywhere, I Realized. And I Could Accept This. It Was All Right.

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.

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.

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.

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How Long Does It Take For A Broken Spirit To Kill A Body That Has Food, Water And Shelter?

I Meet A Number Of People As A Writer Of Fiction Who Say "oh, I Don't Read Much Fiction," As If The History Of The United States, Just As An Example, Isn't An Exercise In Storytelling And Myth-making.

You May Not Believe In Life, But I Don't Believe In Death. Move On!

Any Writer Will Be Happy And Good Only If They Know What They're Doing And Why They're Doing It.

You Bring Joy And Pain In Equal Measure. Joy Because You Are With Me, But Pain Because It Wont Be For Long.

What A Terrible Thing It Is To Botch A Farewell.

Life Of Pi Book

Life On A Lifeboat Isn't Much Of A Life.

Life Of Pi Book

All Living Things Contain A Measure Of Madness That Moves Them In Strange, Sometimes Inexplicable Ways. This Madness Can Be Saving; It Is Part And Parcel Of The Ability To Adapt. Without It, No Species Would Survive.

Time Is An Illusion That Makes Us All Pant.

I Felt I Was Beating A Rainbow To Death

As Much As I Love Movies, It Would Be Presumptuous Of Me To Think That I Know How To Make One.

I Go To Mass Every Sunday, But Love Going To Mosques Too. Muslims Pray In A Beautiful Way.

Why Can't Reason Give Greater Answers? Why Can We Throw A Question Further Than We Can Pull In An Answer? Why Such A Vast Net If There's So Little Fish To Catch?

The Paths To Liberation Are Numerous, But The Bank Along The Way Is Always The Same, The Bank Of Karma, Where The Liberation Account Of Each Of Us Is Credited Or Debited Depending On Our Actions.

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.

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

If You Write Genre Fiction, You Follow The Rules, And You Have To Follow Them Because Readers Expect That.

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.

Christianity Is A Religion In A Rush.

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.

Nothing Beats Reason For Keeping Tigers Away. But Be Excessively Reasonable And You Risk Throwing Out The Universe With The Bathwater.

Progress Is Unstoppable. It Is A Drumbeat To Which We Must All March. Technology Helps And Good Ideas Spread – These Are Two Lows Of Nature. If You Don’t Let Technology Help You, If You Resist Good Ideas, You Condemn Yourself To Dinosaurhood! I Am Utterly Convinced Of This.

Most People Take Who They Are, Naturally, As A Given, And They're Interested In The Sexual Other, But Not In Being The Sexual Other. Most Men Are Interested In Women - Whether Sexually Or Not Is Not The Question - But They Don't Necessarily Want To Be A Woman.

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.

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 Christ Spent An Anguished Night In Prayer, If He Burst Out From The Cross, "my God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?" Then Surely We Are Also Permitted Doubt. But We Must Move On. To Choose Doubt As A Philosophy Of Life Is Akin To Choosing Immobility As A Means Of Transportation.

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.

You Might Think I Lost All Hope At That Point. I Did. And As A Result I Perked Up And Felt Much Better.

My Life Is Like A Memento Mori Painting From European Art: There Is Always A Grinning Skull At My Side To Remind Me Of The Folly Of Human Ambition.

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.

Blessed Be Shock. Blessed Be The Part Of Us That Protects Us From Too Much Pain And Sorrow. At The Heart Of Life Is A Fusebox.

If You Don't Let Technology Help You, If You Resist Good Ideas, You Condemn Yourself To Dinosaurhood.

Books, Like People, Can't Be Reduced To The Cost Of The Materials With Which They Were Made. Books, Like People, Become Unique And Precious Once You Get To Know Them.

But Once A Dead God, Always A Dead God, Even Resurrected. The Son Must Have The Taste Of Death Forever In His Mouth. The Trinity Must Be Tainted By It; There Must Be A Certain Stench At The Right Hand Of God The Father. The Horror Must Be Real. Why Would God Wish That Upon Himself? Why Not Leave Death To Mortals? Why Make Dirty What Is Beautiful, Spoil What Is Perfect? -- Love. That Was His Answer.

We Are All Born Like Catholics, Aren't We—in Limbo, Without Religion, Until Some Figure Introduces Us To God?

I Know Zoos Are No Longer In People's Good Graces. Religion Faces The Same Problem. Certain Illusions About Freedom Plague Them Both.

The Moon Was A Sharply Defined Crescent And The Sky Was Perfectly Clear. The Stars Shone With Such Fierce, Contained Brilliance That It Seemed Absurd To Call The Night Dark.

Music Moves Me - Duh - And That Is Like Having A Window Opening On A Heightened Reality, But The Effect Is Fleeting: When The Music Ends, The Magic, The Uplifting, Vanishes And The Window Slams Shut. Words, On The Other Hand, By The Nature Of How They Work, Emotions Evoked By Dint Of Carefully Laid Out Thoughts, Have A More Lingering Effect.

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.

I Am A Person Who Believes In Form, In The Harmony Of Order. Where We Can, We Must Give Things A Meaningful Shape.

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.

I Thought They Were Helping Me. I Was So Full Of Trust In Them That I Felt Grateful As They Carried Me In The Air. Only When They Threw Me Overboard Did I Begin To Have Doubts.

Misery Loves Company, And Madness Calls It Forth.

If You Take Two Steps Towards God,' He Used To Tell Me, 'god Runs To You!

My Feelings Can Perhaps Be Imagined, But They Can Hardly Be Described.

People Always Seek To Compare. They Can Take The New, But Only If It Is Somehow Connected To The Familiar. We Need That In Our Lives, The Mix Of The New And The Old. But Of Course I'm Flattered About The Comparison With Old Man And The Sea. Hemingway Is A Great Writer.

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

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. As For Nonfiction, For History, It May Be Real, But Its Truth Is Slippery, Hard To Access, With No Fixed Meaning Bolted To It. If History Doesn't Become Story, It Dies To Everyone Except The Historian.

I Can't Live For More Than Four Years Outside Of Canada. I'm Canadian, So Ultimately That Is My Reference Point.

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

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

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