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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.

-Yann Martel

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God Is Universal," Spluttered

Yann Martel

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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.

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If You Stumble At Mere Believability, What Are You Living For? Isn't Love Hard To Believe?

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Science Can Only Take You So Far And Then You Have To Leap

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

It's Hard To Visualize James Bond Without Seeing One Of The Actors Who Played Him. And It's Hard To Visualize Harry Potter Without Seeing Daniel Radcliffe. A Movie Is So Visually Powerful, So Overwhelming, That It Tends To Crowd Out How You Might Have Imagined Things.

War Subjects Itself To Transportation In A Way That We Find Acceptable.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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How Does One Say In The Jargon Of Musicology That My Sould Was Pulled Out Of Me And Thrown Up In The Air, To Be Tossed About By The Music. How Does One Say That I Breathed, That I Existed, In Harmony With The Ups And Downs Of Those Notes. What Kind Of Notes Both Elevate And Cast Down, Exalt And Crush?

People Move Because Of The Wear And Tear Of Anxiety. Because Of The Gnawing Feeling That No Matter How Hard They Work Their Efforts Will Yield Nothing, That What They Build Up In One Year Will Be Torn Down In One Day By Others. Because Of The Impression That The Future Is Blocked Up, That *they* Might Do All Right But Not Their Children. Because Of The Feeling That Nothing Will Change, That Happiness And Prosperity Are Possible Only Somewhere Else.

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These People Fail To Realize That It Is On The Inside That God Must Be Defended, Not On The Outside. They Should Direct Their Anger At Themselves. For Evil In The Open Is But Evil From Within That Has Been Let Out. The Main Battlefield For Good Is Not The Open Ground Of The Public Arena But The Small Clearing Of Each Heart.

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.

What A Terrible Thing It Is To Botch A Farewell.

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Quickly You Make Rash Decisions. You Dismiss Your Last Allies: Hope And Trust. There, You've Defeated Yourself. Fear, Which Is But An Impression, Has Triumphed Over You.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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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.

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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.

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.

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

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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.

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

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

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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Life Is An Interpretation Of A Series Of Facts, And That Interpretation Is Really What Life Is About. So The Division Between Non-fiction And Fiction Has A Certain Logic, But It's A Very Limited One. And By And Large, It Isn't Helpful.

In Art, Something Comes Of Nothing. Out Of The Thin Air And The Ether, You Create A Story. And That Is Intensely Satisfying.

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.

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 Challenge Anyone To Understand Islam, Its Spirit, And Not To Love It. It Is A Beautiful Religion Of Brotherhood And Devotion.

Misery Loves Company, And Madness Calls It Forth.

Nature Can Put On A Thrilling Show. The Stage Is Vast, The Lighting Is Dramatic, The Extras Are Innumerable, And The Budget For Special Effects Is Absolutely Unlimited.

Scientists Are A Friendly, Atheistic, Hard-working, Beer-drinking Lot Whose Minds Are Preoccupied With Sex, Chess And Baseball When They Are Not Preoccupied With Science.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The Presence Of God Is The Finest Of Rewards.

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

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

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.

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

Don’t Worry About Being Good…. Aspire To Be Authentic.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Despair Was A Heavy Blackness That Let No Light In Or Out. It Was A Hell Beyond Expression. I Thank God It Always Passed.

What Works In A Story Is Very Different Than What Works In Cinema. For Example, Dialogue In Books: If You Translate It Too Faithfully, It Sounds A Little Stilted, Because We Often Don't Speak The Way We Speak In Novels. Oral Language Is Much Punchier, Shorter Sentences.

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

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!

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.

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

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.

Artists Invent Things As A Way Of Telling The Truth.

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I Must Say A Word About Fear. It Is Life's Only True Opponent. Only Fear Can Defeat Life. It Is A Clever, Treacherous Adversary, How Well I Know. It Has No Decency, Respects No Law Or Convention, Shows No Mercy. It Goes For Your Weakest Spot, Which It Finds With Unerring Ease. It Begins In Your Mind, Always. One Moment You Are Feeling Calm, Self-possessed, Happy. Then Fear, Disguised In The Garb Of Mild-mannered Doubt, Slips Into Your Mind Like A Spy.

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

The Reason Death Sticks So Closely To Life Isn’t Biological Necessity – It’s Envy.

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.

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.

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.

And What Of My Extended Family-birds, Beasts, And Reptiles? They Too Have Drowned. Every Single Thing I Value In Life Has Been Destroyed. And I Am Allowed No Explanation? I Am To Suffer Hell Without Any Account From Heaven? In That Case, What Is The Purpose Of Reason, Richard Parker? Is It No More Than To Shine At Practicalities-the Getting Of Food, Clothing And Shelter? 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? (pg. 98)

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

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.

If You Took The City Of Tokyo And Turned It Upside Down And Shook It You Would Be Amazed At The Animals That Fall Out: Badgers, Wolves, Boa Constrictors, Crocodiles, Ostriches, Baboons, Capybaras, Wild Boars, Leopards, Manatees, Ruminants, In Untold Numbers. There Is No Doubt In My Mind That That Feral Giraffes And Feral Hippos Have Been Living In Tokyo For Generations Without Seeing A Soul.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Time Is An Illusion That Makes Us All Pant.

First Wonder Goes Deepest; Wonder After That Fits In The Impression Made By The First.

We Were, Literally And Figuratively, In The Same Boat.

Colonialism Is A Terrible Bane For A People Upon Whom It Is Imposed, But A Blessing For A Language. English's Drive To Exploit The New And The Alien, Its Zeal In Robbing Words From Other Languages, Its Incapacity To Feel Qualms Over The Matter, Its Museum-size Overabundance Of Vocabulary, It Shoulder-shrug Approach To Spelling, Its Don't-worry-be-happy Concern For Grammar-the Result Was A Language Whose Colour And Wealth Henry Loved.

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

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

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.

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

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.

To Me, Religion Is About Our Dignity, Not Our Depravity.

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

I Love Cinema. I Think The Risk Of The Aesthetics Being Fixed Is Compensated By Other Advantages. Cinema Is Visually Powerful, It Is A Complete Experience, Reaches Different Audience. It's Something I Really Like. I Like Movies.

The Worst Pair Of Opposites Is Boredom And Terror. Sometimes Your Life Is A Pendulum Swing From One To The Other.

I Went About The Job In A Direct Way. I Took The Hatchet In Both My Hands And Vigorously Beat The Fish On The Head With The Hammerhead (i Still Didn’t Have The Stomach To Use The Sharp Edge). The Dorado Did The Most Extraordinary Thing As It Died: It Began To Flash All Kinds Of Colours In Rapid Succession. Blue, Green, Red, Gold, And Violet Flickered And Shimmered Neon-like On Its Surface As It Struggled. I Felt I Was Beating A Rainbow To Death.

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.

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 Felt I Was Beating A Rainbow To Death

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.

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

My Suffering Left Me Sad And Gloomy.

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

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.

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

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.

I Had To Stop Hoping So Much That A Ship Would Rescue Me. I Should Not Count On Outside Help. Survival Had To Start With Me. In My Experience, A Castaway’s Worst Mistake Is To Hope Too Much And To Do Too Little. 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.

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

Repetition Is Important In The Training Not Only Of Animals But Also Of Humans.

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. Sometimes My Heart Was Sinking So Fast With Anger, Desolation And Weariness, I Was Afraid It Would Sink To The Very Bottom Of The Pacific And I Would Not Be Able To Lift It Back Up.

As For Hearing, The Sloth Is Not So Much Deaf As Uninterested In Sound.

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.

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. I Was Weeping Because ....fill In The Blank With Whatever/whoever Helped You Survive... Had Left Me So Unceremoniously.

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

Life Of Pi Book

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.

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.

If You Stumble Over Mere 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? Reason Is Excellent For Getting Food, Clothing And Shelter. Reason Is The Very Best Tool Kit. Nothing Beats Reason For Keeping Tigers Away. But Be Excessively Reasonable And You Risk Throwing Out The Universe With The Bathwater

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Mockery Be Damned, My Urine Looked Delicious.

Can There Be Any Happiness Greater Than The Happiness Of Salvation?

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

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.

Sometimes I Got My Majors Mixed Up. A Number Of My Fellow Religious-studies Students - Muddled Agnostics Who Didn't Know Which Way Was Up, Who Were In The Thrall Of Reason, That Fool's Gold For The Bright - Reminded Me Of The Three-toed Sloth; And The Three-toed Sloth, Such A Beautiful Example Of The Miracle Of Life, Reminded Me Of God.

Don’t You Bully Me With Your Politeness!

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

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.

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.

Even When God Seemed To Have Abandoned Me, He Was Watching. Even When He Seemed Indifferent To My Suffering, He Was Watching. And When I Was Beyond All Hope Of Saving, He Gave Me Rest. Then He Gave Me A Sign To Continue My Journey.

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

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.

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.

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.

Just As Music Is Noise That Makes Sense, A Painting Is Colour That Makes Sense, So A Story Is Life That Makes Sense.

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.

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

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?

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.

If There's Only One Nation In The Sky, Shouldn't All Passports Be Valid For It?

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.

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.

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

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

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

There's No Peace Like The Peace Of An Inner Courtyard On A Sunny Day.

Slice A Pear And You Will Find That Its Flesh Is Incandescent White. It Glows With Inner Light. Those Who Carry A Knife And A Pear Are Never Afraid Of The Dark.

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.

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