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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.

-Yann Martel

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Japanese-owned Cargo Ship Tsimtsum,

Yann Martel

...

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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

Religion Is More Than Rite And Ritual.

Life Of Pi Book

Words Are Much Better At Relating Emotions And Thoughts.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Art Is The Suitcase Of History, Carrying The Essentials. Art Is The Life Buoy Of History. Art Is Seed, Art Is Memory, Art Is Vaccine.

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.

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

It Was As Unbelievable As The Moon Catching Fire.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Artists Invent Things As A Way Of Telling The Truth.

Telling The Truth

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Misery Loves Company, And Madness Calls It Forth.

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.

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

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

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

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

Time Is An Illusion That Makes Us All Pant.

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

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

These People Walk By A Widow Deformed By Leprosy...walk By Children Dressed In Rags Living In The Street, And They Think, 'business As Usual.' But If They Perceive A Slight Against God, It Is A Different Story. Their Faces Go Red, Their Chests Heave Mightily, They Sputter Angry Words. The Degree Of Their Indignation Is Astonishing. Their Resolve Is Frightening.

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

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.

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.

Gloom Is But A Shadow Of A Cloud Passing By

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.

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.

Most Of Us Get Our History Through Story.

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.

[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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

What A Terrible Thing It Is To Botch A Farewell.

Life Of Pi Book

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Devotion To God

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

Life Of Pi Book

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.

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

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.

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

So You Want Another Story?" Uhh... No. We Would Like To Know What Really Happened." Doesn't The Telling Of Something Always Become A Story?" Uhh... Perhaps In English. In Japanese A Story Would Have An Element Of Invention In It. We Don't Want Any Invention. We Want The 'straight Facts,' As You Say In English." 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?

The Presence Of God Is The Finest Of Rewards.

Presence Of God

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

The World Isn't Just The Way It Is. It Is How We Understand It, No? And In Understanding Something, We Bring Something To It, No? Doesn't That Make Life A Story?

The Individual Soul Touches Upon The World Soul Like A Well Reaches For The Water Table. That Which Sustains The Universe Beyond Thought And Language, And That Which Is At The Core Of Us And Struggles For Expression, Is The Same Thing. The Finite Within The Infinite, The Infinite Within The Finite.

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

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 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.

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.

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

Life Of Pi Book

It's Amazing How Willpower Can Build Walls.

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

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.

Mockery Be Damned, My Urine Looked Delicious.

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.

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

Life Of Pi Book

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

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

...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.

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.

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.

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.

A Zoo Is Not An Ideal Place For An Animal - Of Course The Best Place For A Chimp Is The Wilds Of Tanzania - But A Good Zoo Is A Decent, Acceptable Place. Animals Are Far More Flexible Than We Realize. If They Weren't, They Wouldn't Have Survived. But My Opinion About Zoos Came After Research. Initially I Had The Opinion That Most People Have, That They Are Jails.

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.

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

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