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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.

-Yann Martel

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To Lose A Brother

Yann Martel

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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.

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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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Christianity Is A Religion In A Rush.

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.

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

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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.

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

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.

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

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Work, Work, Work, But What Mark Do We Leave, What Point Do We Make? People Who Are Too Beholden To Work Become Like Erasers: As Things Move Forward, They Leave In Their Wake No Trace Of Themselves.

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

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.

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.

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It Is A Vast Country, So That Inspires You. It's Also The Greatest Hotel On Earth: It Welcomes People From Everywhere. It's A Good Country To Write From Because In Many Ways Canada Is The World.

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

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.

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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?

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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.

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

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My Suffering Left Me Sad And Gloomy.

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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.

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

The Presence Of God Is The Finest Of Rewards.

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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.

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

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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.

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Gloom Is But A Shadow Of A Cloud Passing By

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.

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

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.

I Felt I Was Beating A Rainbow To Death

Stories--individual Stories, Family Stories, National Stories--are What Stitch Together The Disparate Elements Of Human Existence Into A Coherent Whole. We Are Story Animals.

Words Are Much Better At Relating Emotions And Thoughts.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Most Of Us Get Our History Through Story.

What A Terrible Thing It Is To Botch A Farewell.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

[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.

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

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?

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Life Of Pi Book

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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'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.

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)

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Misery Loves Company, And Madness Calls It Forth.

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.

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?

It's Amazing How Willpower Can Build Walls.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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