01UndatedGrief is a disease. We were riddled with its pockmarks, tormented by its fevers, broken by its blows. It ate at us like maggots, attacked us like lice- we scratched ourselves to the edge of madness. In the process we became as withered as crickets, as tired as old dogs.Yann Martel / quote ↗
02UndatedThe sad fact is there are no natural deaths, despite what doctors say. Every death is felt by someone as a murder, the unjust taking of a loved being. And even the luckiest of us will encounter at least one murder in our own lives: our own. It is our fate. We all live a murder mystery of which we are the victim.Yann Martel / quote ↗
03UndatedWhen you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.Yann Martel / quote ↗
04UndatedIf God on the Cross is God shamming a human tragedy, it turns the Passion of Christ into the Farce of Christ. The death of the Son must be real. Father Martin assured me it was. But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste for 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 the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love. That was Father Martin's answer.Yann Martel / quote ↗
05UndatedIf 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.Yann Martel / quote ↗
06UndatedAgeing is not easy, Sennhora Castro. It's a terrible, incurable pathology. And great love is another pathology. It starts well. It's a most desirable disease. One wouldn't want to do without it. It's like yeast that corrupts the juice of grapes. One loves, one loves, one persists in loving-the incubation period can be very long- and then, with death, comes the heart break. Love must always meet its unwanted end.Yann Martel / quote ↗
07UndatedTime and sunshine healed a sore, but the process was slow, and new boils appeared if I didn't stay dry.Yann Martel / quote ↗
08UndatedFor 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.Yann Martel / quote ↗
09UndatedFor 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.Yann Martel / quote ↗
10UndatedWhen 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.Yann Martel / quote ↗
12UndatedLife is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can get.Yann Martel / quote ↗
14UndatedIt seems to be a law of human nature that those who live by the sea are suspiciousof swimmers, just as those who live in the mountains are suspicious of mountainclimbers.Yann Martel / quote ↗
15UndatedOnly death consistently excites your emotions, whether contemplating when life is safe and stale, or fleeing it when life is threatened and preciousYann Martel / quote ↗
16UndatedThere are animals we haven't stopped by. Don't think they're harmless. Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.Yann Martel / quote ↗
18UndatedStories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.Yann Martel / quote ↗
20UndatedA house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.Yann Martel / quote ↗
21UndatedMy developing sense was that the foundation of a story is an emotional foundation. If a story does not work emotionally, it does not work at all.Yann Martel / quote ↗
22UndatedWhat 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 of there's so little fish to catch?Yann Martel / quote ↗
23UndatedAll 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.Yann Martel / quote ↗
24UndatedSurvival 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.Yann Martel / quote ↗
