Life Of Pi Quotes
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane."
"If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams."
"Animals are also poisoned. And there are indecencies even more bizarre: onanists breaking a sweat on monkeys, ponies, birds; a religious freak who cut a snake's head off; a deranged man who took to urinating in an elk's mouth."
"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life."
"The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar."
"It was as if I had been given a sudden glimpse into the blueprint of life's energy and I could see the Universe as an orchestrated symphony of strings."
"We are all born like Catholics, aren't we-in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?"
"If there is a change, it is usually for the lesser rather than the greater; many people seem to lose God along life's way."
"A germ of religious exaltation, no bigger than a mustard seed, was sown in me and left to germinate."
"I am a Hindu because of sculptured cones of red kumkum powder and baskets of yellow turmeric nuggets."
"My heart still skips a beat when I catch sight of the murti, of God Residing, in the inner sanctum of a temple."
"But religion is more than rite and ritual. There is what the rite and ritual stand for."
"The universe makes sense to me through Hindu eyes."
"The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table."
"Atman seeks to realize Brahman, to be united with the Absolute."
"I owe to Hinduism the original landscape of my religious imagination."
"I first heard of the tremendous, cosmic might of loving kindness in this Hindu land."
"The truth of life is that Brahman is no different from atman, the spiritual force within us."
"I can well imagine an atheist's last words: 'White, white! L-L-Love! My God!'"
"These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside."
"The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart."
"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."
"To be afraid of this ridiculous dog when there was a tiger about was like being afraid of splinters when trees are falling down."
"Never had simple arithmetic brought such a smile to my face."
"No animal, however mighty, can do without water for any extended period of time."
"A modest glow of hope flickered to life within me, like a candle in the night."
"It was not the ceaseless motion of the sea that disturbed me, nor the wind; you get used to those the way you get used to lumps in a mattress."
"My greatest wish—other than salvation—was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story."
"Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love."
"Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression."
"On the day when I estimated it was Mother's birthday, I sang 'Happy Birthday' to her out loud."
"To display his feces openly, to flaunt the smell of them, would have been a sign of social dominance."
"It was not good zookeeping I was up to, but psychological bullying."
"Relieving myself... was a long-drawn, arduous and painful event that left me bathing in sweat and helpless with exhaustion."
"It is life's only true opponent. Only by fighting and winning can the soul be nourished and the heart be purified."
"Animals are territorial. They mark their territory with personal scent. Makes for a kind of common knowledge."
"The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar. It was natural that, bereft and desperate as I was, in the throes of unremitting suffering, I should turn to God."
"Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away."
"Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher."
"You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you."
"The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?"
"If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for?"
"Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer."
"My heart sank. The anger seemed to go out of her. Without saying another word she went back to nursing the sailor."
"We're all alone, Piscine, all alone," she said, in a tone that broke every hope in my body.
"He was such an evil man. Worse still, he met evil in me-selfishness, anger, ruthlessness. I must live with that."
"Solitude began. I turned to God. I survived."
"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?"