01c. 1963 ADI 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.Yann Martel / quote ↗
03c. 1963 ADCome aboard if your destination is oblivion - it should be our next stop.Yann Martel / quote ↗
04c. 1963 ADThe obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists.Yann Martel / quote ↗
05c. 1963 ADDespair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression.Yann Martel / quote ↗
06c. 1963 ADIt'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. That bungled goodbye hurts me to this day.Yann Martel / quote ↗
07c. 1963 ADAs for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound.Yann Martel / quote ↗
08c. 1963 ADThe indifference of the many, combined with the active hatred of the few, has sealed the fate of animals.Yann Martel / quote ↗
09c. 1963 ADThe three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. A good-natured smile is forever on its lips...I have seen that smile with my own eyes. I am not one given to projecting human traits and emotions onto animals, but many a time during that month in Brazil, looking up at a sloth in repose, I felt I was in the presence of upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer, wise beings whose intense imaginative lives were beyond the reach of scientific probing.Yann Martel / quote ↗
10c. 1963 ADI 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...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.Yann Martel / quote ↗
11c. 1963 ADThe 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.Yann Martel / quote ↗
12c. 1963 ADIn 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.Yann Martel / quote ↗
13c. 1963 ADIf 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.Yann Martel / quote ↗
14c. 1963 ADI'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. 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.Yann Martel / quote ↗
15c. 1963 ADIt's not atheists who get stuck in my caw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for awhile. We all must pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we... But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as means of transportation.Yann Martel / quote ↗
16c. 1963 ADI 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. 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. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.Yann Martel / quote ↗
17c. 1963 ADBut it was hard, oh, it was hard. 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.Yann Martel / quote ↗
18c. 1963 ADWhen your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.Yann Martel / quote ↗
19c. 1963 ADAt 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.Yann Martel / quote ↗
20c. 1963 ADAll living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways.Yann Martel / quote ↗
21c. 1963 ADAll living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in a strange, sometimes inexplicable ways.Yann Martel / quote ↗
22c. 1963 ADI must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.Yann Martel / quote ↗
23c. 1963 ADI did not grasp all these details - and many more - right away. They came to my notice with time and as a result of necessity. I would be in the direst of dire straits, facing a bleak future, when some small thing, some detail, would transform itself and appear in my mind in a new light. It would no longer be the small thing it was before, but the most important thing in the world, the thing that would save my life. This happened time and again. How true it is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.Yann Martel / quote ↗
24c. 1963 ADThere are many ways in which life's little candle can be snuffed out. A cold wind pursues us all.Yann Martel / quote ↗
