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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.

-Yann Martel

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I Am Reminded Of

Yann Martel

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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.

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It Was As Unbelievable As The Moon Catching Fire.

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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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Artists Invent Things As A Way Of Telling The Truth.

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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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I Have A Fierce Will To Live. 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.

Christianity Is A Religion In A Rush.

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

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.

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.

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

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Time Is An Illusion That Makes Us All Pant.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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

Gloom Is But A Shadow Of A Cloud Passing By

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!

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.

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

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

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.

The Presence Of God Is The Finest Of Rewards.

Presence Of God

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The Planet Is Populated By Human Beings, Of Which There Are Only Two Sexes, And The Role Of The Writer Is To Explore Otherness, Other Realities. So The Idea Of A Man Exploring What It's Like To Be A Woman Doesn't Strike Me As Being That Wild Or Crazy An Idea.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

My Ears Were Full. Nothing More, Not One More Sound, Could Push Into Them And Be Registered.

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

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.

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

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