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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.

-Yann Martel

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Hindus, In Their Capacity

Yann Martel

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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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Devotion To God

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

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?

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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.

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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.

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

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I Ask You, Is It The Fig Tree's Fault That It's Not The Season For Figs? What Kind Of Thing Is That To Do To An Innocent Tree, Wither It Instantly?

I Was Giving Up. I Would Have Given Up - If A Voice Hadn't Made Itself Heard In My Heart. The Voice Said "i Will Not Die. I Refuse It. I Will Make It Through This Nightmare. I Will Beat The Odds, As Great As They Are. I Have Survived So Far, Miraculously. Now I Will Turn Miracle Into Routine. The Amazing Will Be Seen Everyday. I Will Put In All The Hard Work Necessary. Yes, So Long As God Is With Me, I Will Not Die. Amen.

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

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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

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

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)

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

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

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.

And In Between The Two, In Between The Sky And The Sea, Were All The Winds. And There Were All The Nights And All The Moons. To Be A Castaway Is To Be A Point Perpetually At The Centre Of A Circle. However Much Things May Appear To Change-the Sea May Shift From Whisper To Rage, The Sky Might Go From Fresh Blue To Blinding White To Darkest Black-the Geometry Never Changes. Your Gaze Is Always A Radius. The Circumference Is Ever Great. In Fact, The Circles Multiply. To Be A Castaway Is To Be Caught In A Harrowing Ballet Of Circles.

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

Misery Loves Company, And Madness Calls It Forth.

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.

Afterwards, When It's All Over, You Meet God. What Do You Say To God?

I Can Well Imagine An Athiest's Last Words: "white, White! L-l-love! My God!" - And The Deathbed Leap Of Faith. Whereas The Agnostic, If He Stays True To His Reasonable Self, If He Stays Beholden To Dry, Yeastless Factuality, Might Try To Explain The Warm Light Bathing Him By Saying "possibly A F-f-failing Oxygenation Of The B-b-brain," And, To The Very End, Lack Imagination And Miss The Better Story.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Language Of Prose Is Very Different Than The Language Of Cinema, So The Movie Has To Successfully Translate What Was In The Book.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

It Was As Unbelievable As The Moon Catching Fire.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

But I Want To Pray To Allah. I Want To Be A Christian.

I Am Reminded Of A Story Of Lord Krishna When He Was A Cowherd. Every Night He Invites The Milkmaids To Dance With Him In The Forest. They Come And They Dance. The Night Is Dark, The Fire In Their Midst Roars And Crackles, The Beat Of The Music Gets Ever Faster - The Girls Dance And Dance And Dance With Their Sweet Lord, Who Has Made Himself So Abundant As To Be In The Arms Of Each And Every Girl. But The Moment The Girls Become Possessive, The Moment Each One Imagines That Krishna Is Her Partner Alone, He Vanishes. So It Is That We Should Not Be Jealous Of God.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

To Choose Doubt As A Philosophy Of Life Is Akin To Choosing Immobility As A Means Of Transportation.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Life Of Pi Book

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

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.

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.

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

He's A Shy Man. Life Has Taught Him Not To Show Off What Is Most Precious To Him.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

I Have Read That There Are Two Fears That Cannot Be Trained Out Of Us: The Startle Reaction Upon Hearing An Unexpected Noise, And Vertigo. I Would Like To Add A Third, To Wit, The Rapid And Direct Approch Of A Known Killer

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

I Spent More Hours Than I Can Count A Quiet Witness To The Highly Mannered, Manifold Expressions Of Life That Grace Our Planet. It Is Something So Bright, Loud, Weird And Delicate As To Stupefy The Senses.

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.

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.

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 Worry About Being Good…. Aspire To Be Authentic.

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.

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

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

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

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