You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it. Yann Martel More Quotes by Yann Martel More Quotes From Yann Martel I love Canada...It is a great country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos. Yann Martel intelligent country people If you stumble over mere 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? Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater Yann Martel life-is-hard love-is believe 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. Yann Martel mind animal thinking Life is an interpretation of a series of facts, and that interpretation is really what life is about. So the division between non-fiction and fiction has a certain logic, but it's a very limited one. And by and large, it isn't helpful. Yann Martel division facts fiction I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts. Yann Martel grateful doubt air I can only tell my story, what you believe is up to you. Yann Martel up-to-you stories believe I meet a number of people as a writer of fiction who say "Oh, I don't read much fiction," as if the history of the United States, just as an example, isn't an exercise in storytelling and myth-making. Yann Martel exercise numbers people Just as art brings you to another place, so does religion - and to ask questions of factuality tends to reduce both. If you say you were inspired by a novel, that implies that your book is a work of fiction. Yann Martel doe book art 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. Yann Martel saving journey suffering Afterwards, when it's all over, you meet God. What do you say to God? Yann Martel over-you 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. Yann Martel feels way fall 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. Yann Martel illusion week months 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. Yann Martel irrational-numbers understanding names Religion is more than rite and ritual. Yann Martel life-of-pi-book ritual rite Fanatics do not have faith - they have belief. With faith you let go. You trust. Whereas with belief you cling. Yann Martel belief have-faith letting-go I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both. Yann Martel grace zoos people If you take two steps towards God,' he used to tell me, 'God runs to you! Yann Martel steps running two How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer, but art is very self-referential, whereas religion claims to go beyond the bounds of human existence. Yann Martel self evil art 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. Yann Martel girl powerful book My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described. Yann Martel feelings
