« When you’ve suffered a great deal in life, each
additional pain is both unbearable and trifling. My life is like a memento mori
painting from European art : there is always a grinning skull at my side
to remind me of the folly of human ambition. I mock this skull. I look at it
and I say, ‘You’ve got the wrong fellow. You may not believe in life, but I don’t
believe in death. Move on !’ The skull snickers and moves even closer, but
that doesn’t surprise me. The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t
biological necessity – it’s envy. 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. »
« I 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 know zoos are no longer in people’s good graces.
Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them
both. »
« It is true that those we meet can change us,
sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our
names. Witness Simon who is called Peter, Matthew also known as Levi, Nathaniel
who is Bartholomew, Judas, not Iscariot, who took the name Thaddeus, Simeon who
went by Niger, Saul who became Paul. »
« Repetition is important in the training not only of
animals but also of humans. »
« And so, in that Greek letter that looks like a shack
with a corrugated tin roof, in that elusive, irrational number with which
scientists try to understand the universe, I found refuge. »
« It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers
and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith.
Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them – and then they
leap. »
« To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to
choosing immobility as a means of transportation. »
« 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. »
« If thirst can be so taxing that even God Incarnate
complains about it, imagine the effect on a regular human. It was enough to
make me go raving mad. I have never known a worse physical hell than this
putrid taste and pasty feeling in the mouth, this unbearable pressure at the
back of the throat, this sensation that my blood was turning to a thick syrup
that barely flowed. Truly, by comparison, a tiger was nothing. »
« It seems orange – such a nice Hindu colour – is the
colour of survival because the whole inside of the boat and the tarpaulin and
the life jackets and the lifebuoy and the oars and most every other significant
object aboard was orange. Even the plastic, beadless whistles were orange. »
« How true it is that necessity is the mother of
invention, how very true. »
« I 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 has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. »
« Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived
because I forgot even the very notion of time. »
« Something in me died then that has never come back to
life. »
« Don’t you bully me with your politeness ! Love
is hard to believe, as any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God
is hard to believe, as any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe ? »
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
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