Yann Martel Quotes

Don't you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to bel...

My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.

There are animals we haven't stopped by. Don't think they're harmless. Life will defend itself no ma...

When I corrected her, I told her that in fact she was not so wrong; that Hindus, in their capacity f...

If you stumble about believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover....

I couldn't get Him out of my head. Still can't. I spent three solid days thinking about Him. The mor...

As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound.

When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for...

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians...

Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, b...

Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous possessive love that grabs at ...

There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the ...

Even when God seemed to have abandoned me, he was watching. Even when he seemed indifferent to my su...

Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they...

If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude...

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a cl...

The paths to liberation are numerous, but the bank along the way is always the same, the Bank of Kar...

Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at...

Mockery be damned, my urine looked delicious.

When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.

My gratitude to him is as boundless as the Pacific ocean.

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent.

I thought I knew not only her habits but also her limits. This display of ferocity, of savage courag...

For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is...

It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith. Like me, they g...

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a cl...

I suppose in the end the whole of life becomes an act of letting go. But what always hurts the most ...

The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of e...

To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is s...

If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, 'My God, my God, why h...

Come aboard if your destination is oblivion - it should be our next stop.

Only death consistently excites your emotions, whether contemplating when life is safe and stale, or...

If God on the Cross is God shamming a human tragedy, it turns the Passion of Christ into the Farce o...

I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion o...

So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way,...

I don't mean to defend zoos. Close them all down if you want (and let us hope that what wildlife rem...

These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside....

Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at...

If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe? Don't you...

All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable wa...

Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle ho...

I wept like a child. It was not because I was overcome at having survived my ordeal, though I was. N...

You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.

I knew very little about the religion. [Christianity] It had a reputation for few gods and great vio...

If there's only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it?

You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much bett...

Time and sunshine healed a sore, but the process was slow, and new boils appeared if I didn't stay d...

For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought fa...

What is the purpose of reason, Richard Parker? Is it no more than to shine at practicalities - the g...

Some of us give up on life with only a resigned sigh. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still o...

It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left...

We are all born like Catholics . . . in limbo, without religion.

I was giving up. I would have given up - if a voice hadn't made itself heard in my heart. The voice ...

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity--it's envy. Life is so beautif...

Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU...

It seems to be a law of human nature that those who live by the sea are suspiciousof swimmers, just ...

Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression.

God is universal," spluttered the priest.The imam nodded strong approval. "There is only one God.""A...

Books, like people, can't be reduced to the cost of the materials with which they were made. Books, ...

You might have noticed that I have been sending you used books. I have done this not to save money, ...

To her, writing is making stock and reading is sipping broth, but only the spoken word is the full r...

They never look very big on the table, the bodies. It's built to accommodate the largest frames, the...

There are many ways in which life's little candle can be snuffed out. A cold wind pursues us all.

The holy word is story, and story is the holy word.

Grief is a disease. We were riddled with its pockmarks, tormented by its fevers, broken by its blows...

Ageing is not easy, Sennhora Castro. It's a terrible, incurable pathology. And great love is another...

What his uncle does not understand is that in walking backwards, his back to the world, his back to ...

We are random animals. That is who we are, and we have only ourselves, nothing more--there is no gre...

Under the pathologist's microscope, life and death fight in an illuminated circle in a sort of cellu...

My developing sense was that the foundation of a story is an emotional foundation. If a story does n...

Like punk rock, like Jackson Pollock, like Jack Kerouac, it was truly human, a mix of perfect beauty...

The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. A go...

How does one say in the jargon of musicology that my sould was pulled out of me and thrown up in the...

A plain is what a mountain aims to be: the closest you can come to being in outer space while yet ha...

You see, the penis, it's so graceless, wouldn't you agree? When it's cold and shrivelled up, it look...

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity – it’s envy.

I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from ...

When the course of experience made me see that there is no saviour and no special grace, no remissio...

Trees were not hard, irritable things, but discreetly orgasmic beings moaning at a level too deep fo...

I've never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. The...

I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a cl...

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.

These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy...walk by children dressed in rags living in the st...

At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the univer...

Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innu...

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a cl...

If literature does one thing, it makes you more empathetic by making you live other lives and feel t...

A story is a wedding in which we listeners are the groom watching the bride coming up the aisle. It ...

I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful...

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity - it's envy. Life is so beauti...

...he found it where he should have looked first, on the Internet, which is a net indeed, one that c...

I did not grasp all these details - and many more - right away. They came to my notice with time and...

How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer,...

Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?

Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith...

The sad fact is there are no natural deaths, despite what doctors say. Every death is felt by someon...

He seems to be attracting religions the way a dog attracts fleas.

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity- its envy. Life is so beautifu...

So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way,...

Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love - but sometimes it was...