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.

Yann Martel

Categorized in : Blood Boys Religious

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.

Yann Martel

baseball drinking sex

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

Yann Martel

philosophy life mean

Truth is a nebulous thing. There are certain, definite truths, but the truth of our lives goes far beyond facts.

Yann Martel

truth-is certain facts

It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.

Yann Martel

life-of-pi-book names sometimes

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

prayer philosophy moving

The presence of God is the finest of rewards.

Yann Martel

finest rewards presence-of-god

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

Yann Martel

brotherhood challenges beautiful

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.

Yann Martel

giving-up hard-work heart

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.

Yann Martel

jealous beautiful life

The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar.

Yann Martel

soar mind want

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

grace expression earth

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.

Yann Martel

emotional real fiction

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.

Yann Martel

saving inspirational moving

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.

Yann Martel

agony next suffering

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.

Yann Martel

writing country people

It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.

Yann Martel

opponents defeat fear

That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?

Yann Martel

essence reality fiction

Time is an illusion that makes us all pant.

Yann Martel

illusion

Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.

Yann Martel

company misery madness

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.

Yann Martel

dramatic unlimited special