Yann Martel Quotes - Page 3

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

When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.

Mockery be damned, my urine looked delicious.

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.

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.

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.

A story is a wedding in which we listeners are the groom watching the bride coming up the aisle. It is together, in an act of imaginary consummation, that the story is born. This act wholly involves us, as any marriage would, and just as no marriage is exactly the same as another, so each of us interprets a story differently, feels for it differently. A story calls upon us...as individuals-and we like that. Stories benefit the human mind.

Trees were not hard, irritable things, but discreetly orgasmic beings moaning at a level too deep for our brutish ears. And flowers were quick explosive orgasms, like making love in the shower.

When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity – it’s envy.

I don't mean to defend zoos. Close them all down if you want (and let us hope that what wildlife remains can survive in what is left of the natural world). I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusion about freedom plague them both.

Like punk rock, like Jackson Pollock, like Jack Kerouac, it was truly human, a mix of perfect beauty and cathartic error.