Life Of Pi Quotes

Everything looks beautiful in Life of Pi. ~ Lisa Schwarzbaum

We believe what we see.' ... What do you do when you're in the dark? ~ Yann Martel

I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality. ~ Yann Martel

Much hostile and aggressive behaviour among animals is the expression of social insecurity. ~ Yann Martel

...I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape. [...] It is important in life to conclude things properly. Only then you can let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse..."
~Life of Pi, chapter 94 ~ Yann Martel

But I want to pray to Allah. I want to be a Christian. ~ Yann Martel

Before 'Life of Pi,' I wanted to do economics. And now, I realize how bad a mistake that would have been. I just can't see it as my cup of tea anymore. ~ Suraj Sharma

Yes! Practice-singular!' the wise men screamed in unison. Three index fingers, like punctuation marks, jumped to attention in the air to emphasize their point (Life of Pi 68). ~ Yann Martel

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

There people fail to realise that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. - Pi Patel in Life of Pi
~ Yann Martel

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

Once upon a time there was a banana and it grew. It grew until it was large, firm, yellow and fragrant. Then it fell to the ground and someone came upon it and ate it and afterwards that person felt better. ~ Martel, Yann

Books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play baseball or soccer, and mine was the gangly, unathletic kid that no one wanted on their team. ~ Yann Martel

'Life of Pi' was actually a very simple novel to write. ~ Yann Martel

If you stumble about 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? ~ Yann Martel

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. ~ Yann Martel

Gloom is but a shadow of a cloud passing by ~ Yann Martel

The Life of Pi' timelessly encapsulates an objectively true & real meme that God is Love and seeks out those He calls unto himself."

~R. Alan Woods [2013] ~ R. Alan Woods

Mockery be damned, my urine looked delicious. ~ Yann Martel

I suppose in the end the whole of life becomes an act of letting go. But what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye. ~ Yann Martel

I would like congratulate everyone who was a part of 'Life of Pi.' ~ Anupam Kher

Time and sunshine healed a sore, but the process was slow, and new boils appeared if I didn't stay dry. ~ Yann Martel

I don't know if I saw blood before turning into Mother's arms or if I daubed it on later, in my memory, with a brush (Life of Pi 36) ~ Yann Martel

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 if there's so little fish to catch? ~ Yann Martel

Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. ~ Yann Martel

So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?' Mr. Okamoto: 'That's an interesting question?' Mr. Chiba: 'The story with animals.' Mr. Okamoto: 'Yes. The story with animals is the better story.' Pi Patel: 'Thank you. And so it goes with God. ~ Yann Martel

How true is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true. ~ Yann Martel

What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell. I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape. For example - I wonder - could you tell my jumbled story in exactly one hundred chapters, not one more, not one less? I'll tell you, that's one thing I have about my nickname, the way the number runs on forever. It'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. I wish so much that I'd had one last look at him in the lifeboat, that I'd provoked him a little, so that I was on his mind. I wish I had said to him then - yes, I know, to a tiger, but still - I wish I had said, "Richard Parker, it's over. We have survived. Can you believe it? I owe you more gratitude than I can express I couldn't have done it without you. I would like to say it formally: Richard Parker, thank you. Thank you for saving my life. And now go where you must. You have known the confined freedom of a zoo most of your life; now you will know the free confinement of a jungle. I wish you all the best with it. Watch out for Man. He is not your friend. But I hope you will remember me as a friend. I will never forget you , that is certain. You will always be with me, in my heart. What is that hiss? Ah, our boat has touched sand. So farewell, Richard Parker, farewell. God be wi ~ Yann Martel

I have heard that all ideas of equality are visionary - that they can never be realized - and I believe it. But surely, though there must be hewers of wood, and drawers of water, they ought to have the absolute necessaries of life. ~ Charlotte Turner Smith

He wrote arguments for and against life; he began to think the slowest and most painful form of suicide was living, running the whole decathlon of suffering, no breather or bottled water. Fear of dying was irrational. Death was utilitarian. Decrease in net resource consumption and planetary suffering. Increase in net comedy. There was no afterlife but there was a right-before-death, and medical research said it was loopy and nice, all white lights and gentle voices. With booze it wasn't even scary. Some people with terrible lives didn't kill themselves, but that didn't mean they shouldn't. Most people weren't alive and didn't mind. You couldn't regret it. ~ Tony Tulathimutte

Reality is infinitely complex, yet it is designed to experience in simplicity. ~ Guy Lozier

Reuven, I did not want my Daniel to become like my brother, may he rest in peace. Better I should have had no son at all than to have a brilliant son who had no soul. I looked at my Daniel when he was four years old, and I said to myself, How will I teach this mind what it is to have a soul? How will I teach this mind to understand pain? How will I teach it to want to take on another person's suffering? How will I do this and not lose my son, my precious son whom I love as I love the Master of the Universe Himself? How will I do this and not cause my son, God forbid, to abandon the Master of the Universe and His Commandments? How could I teach my son the way I was taught by my father and not drive him away from Torah? Because this is America, Reuven. This is not Europe. It is an open world here. Here there are libraries and books and schools. Here there are great universities that do not concern themselves with how many Jewish students they have. I did not want to drive my son away from God, but I did not want him to grow up a mind without a soul. I knew already when he was a boy that I could not prevent his mind from going to the world for knowledge. I knew in my heart that it might prevent him from taking my place. But I had to prevent it from driving him away completely from the Master of the Universe. And I had to make certain his soul would the soul of a tzaddik no matter what he did with his life. ~ Chaim Potok

Life when one first arrives is a continual mortification as one's romantic illusions are successively shattered and the musical treasure-house of one's imagination crumbles before the hopelessness of the reality. Every day fresh experiences bring fresh disappointments. ~ Hector Berlioz

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us. ~ T. S. Eliot

As I acknowledge the boundaries within myself, I am given plenty of opportunities to reinforce them. ~ Renae A. Sauter

It was just him and me. He fought with honor. If it weren't for his honor, he and the others would have beaten me together. They might have killed me, then. His sense of honor saved my life. I didn't fight with honor ... I fought to win. ~ Orson Scott Card

It is easy to forgive children who are afraid of the dark but the real tragedy of life is men who are afraid of the light. ~ Plato

A very receptive state of mind ... not unlike a sheet of film itself - seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second's exposure conceives a life in it. ~ Minor White

I grew up Presbyterian, just a basic Protestant upbringing. There were years in my life when I would go to church every Sunday and to Sunday school. Then I just phased out of it. ~ Andy Dick

It is such a comfort to drop the tangles of life into God's hands and leave them there. ~ Lettie Cowman

"I am the awareness that is aware that there is attachment." That's the beginning of the transformation of consciousness. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Suicide carried off many. Drink and the devil took care of the rest ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Didn't life consist of the things you did each day? ~ Lois Lowry

Disease has no intent. It doesn't want anything. It has no malevolent desire to kill. If it could talk it would not say "I want to make you ill. I want to bring you to the brink of death. I want to kill." It would say only "I make people ill. I bring them to the brink of death. I can kill."

The disease is like machine that does what it does, but has no cognizance of self. When a machine stops working, it does not care, and it doesn't celebrate when it starts working again.

To those that have it, and to their loved ones, the disease seems heinous, deliberate,and personal. And of course I know why they feel this way... when you are in a fight for your life, then surely there is an adversary. There is something opposed to you. Something that desires to defeat you. You want to believe the enemy is the disease. You don't want to believe, even for a minute, that the enemy is your own body. This weak tent of flesh, that cannot stand up against a speck of contagion. This fragile weave of muscle, bone, and soul, that also cannot resist the power of flame, nor the pull of the ground below it. ~ Susan Meissner

But she was so happy in her gilded cage, wasn't she? She ate well, slept well, enjoyed herself She lacked nothing. And then, look, a bunch of mental cases turn her away from her happiness and send her to -- how did you put it? -- to 'blow herself away'?. The good doctor lives next door to a war but he doesn't want to hear a word about it. And he thinks his wife shouldn't worry about it, either. … We're at war. Some people take up arms; others twiddle their thumbs. And still others make a killing in the name of the Cause. That's life. … Your wife chose her side. The happiness you offered her smelled of decay. It repulsed her, you get it? She didn't want your happiness. She couldn't work on her suntan while her people were bent under the Zionist yoke. Do I have to draw you a picture to make you understand, or do you refuse to look reality in the face? ~ Yasmina Khadra

Science could potentially do a better job explaining the meaning of life if scientists devise experiments that can weed out the best answers from the worst. The principle difference between religion and science is as follows: the religious make stuff up to explain what they don't understand. Scientists do the same, but scientists run their ideas through a very rigorous filter that consists of logic, experimentation and peer review. Such a filter eliminates the worst ideas and preserves the best.
So if a scientist answers the question, "What is the meaning of life," his answer, at the very worst, is no less valid than an answer that comes from the highest witchdoctor or priest. ~ G.M. Jackson

There exist three poisons in life: desire, anger, and ignorance. One poison is the root of the other two. To attain enlightenment, you must swallow the root of your poisons, so that you die. You die many times to attain the enlightenment of Buddha. ~ H.S. Kim

It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom--for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself. Declaration of Arbroath (1320) ~ J.R. Tomlin

When you live strictly by communal terms and conditions, your sense of self worth is intimately tied to its systems and processes, always tied to its terms which in turn can never return you worth but rather value (something negotiable and strictly communal-dependent). And that's because you believe things wrongly, in relation to both yourself and the communal. ~ Dew Platt

There is an increasing push to compartmentalize faith separately from our life in the public square - and it's not possible - at least, it's not possible if we continue the American tradition of true individual freedom, which also implies individual responsibility. Without an objective moral standard, that's not possible. ~ Mike Huckabee

The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child's life. ~ Betty Smith

The secret to a well balanced life is a cup of tea in one hand and a good book in the other ~ The Tea Spot

Before we can study the central issues of life today, we must destroy the prejudices and fallacies born of previous centuries. ~ Leo Tolstoy

This was the danger, the seduction of time travel, she realized - it was the opportunity, the freedom of a thousand possibilities of where to live and how to start over. It was the beauty open to you in your life if you only stopped for a moment to look. ~ Alexandra Bracken

It's a wonderful time when you sit down around the table for dinner and discuss life. No matter where you are, it gives the semblance of normalcy to my crazy world. ~ Melina Kanakaredes

When God lays His finger on your heart it cannot help but be filled with love for others; if that doesn't happen there is nothing wrong with God's finger there is something wrong with your heart ~ Rassool Jibraeel Snyman

I am speaking the truth now without any difficulty. For the truth is always easy and simple. And in its simplicity lies a savage power. I only arrived at the savage, primitive truths of life after years of struggle. For it is only very rarely that people can arrive at the simple, but awesome and powerful truths of life after only a few years. And to have arrived at the truth means that one no longer fears death. For death and truth are similar in that they both require a great courage if one wishes to face them. And truth is like death in that it kills. When I killed I did it with truth not with a knife. That is why they are afraid and in a hurry to execute me. They do not fear my knife. It is my truth which frightens them. This fearful truth gives me great strength. It protects me from fearing death, or life, or hunger, or nakedness, or destruction. It is this fearful truth which prevents me from fearing the brutality of rulers and policemen. I spit with ease on their lying faces and words, on their lying newspapers. ~ Nawal El Saadawi

How could he know this new dawn's light would change his life forever? Set sail to sea, but pulled off course by the light of golden treasure. ~ Metallica

Maybe there came a point in life where you had to quit categorizing whole groups of people by a few bad experiences. ~ Lisa Wingate

They are thought pictures -- the outstanding headlands of the meandering shores of life, and are points to steer by on the broad sea of thought and experience. They body forth in living forms and colors the ever varying lights and shadows of the soul. ~ Frederick Douglass

Down you go, but all the while you feel suspended and buoyed as you somersault in slow motion like a somnolent tumbler pigeon, and sprawl supine on the eiderdown of the air, or lazily turn to embrace your pillow, enjoying every last instant of soft, deep, death-padded life, with the earth's green see-saw now above, now below, and the voluptuous crucifixion, as you stretch yourself in the growing rush, in the nearing swish, and then your loved body's obliteration in the Lap of the Lord. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

We had never built, never created, only stolen your garments and lived in your cities and fed ourselves on your life, your vitality, your very blood - but we could create, given a chance, we had it within us to whisper stories of cities of our own. The red thirst has been a curse, has made my race and yours enemies, has robbed my people of all noble aspirations. ~ George R R Martin

I have been a sports fan my whole life. To be able to talk about sports in an intelligent, journalistic fashion and to do things of a serious nature is a dream job. ~ Bryant Gumbel

The highest compliment we can give to God, our Creator, is to thoroughly enjoy the gift of life. One should never look a gift universe in the mouth! The best way to pay for a beautiful moment is to enjoy it. ~ Ronald Rolheiser

The dark, uncontrolled, primordial part of a person informs them that they are alive. Living free entails accepting a slew of wildness. All wild animals act by instinct. Human instinct and intuitive thought allow us to gain insights and new beliefs, which human rationalization confirms. Logic and intuition work well together, if both sources of mental visualization are drawn from when most apropos. Planning carefully should never replace the spirit for improvisation. Acting recklessly is no substitute for measured evaluation. Nonetheless, a dash of craziness makes most people more endearing than the calculating banker whose ledger driven life causes them to see life in terms of money pouches. Letting go of all conceptions of what is, and dreaming what could be, is a form of delusion. Knowing the difference between fantasy and reality does not mean that a person should disdain imaginative acts. I need to recognize when it is time to stop woolgathering and come back down to reality and work in the pebbly bedrock of the here and now. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster