Yann Martel

“Kematian selalu membuntuti Kehidupan dengan begitu dekat, bukanlah karena keharusan biologis, melainkan karena rasa iri. Kehidupan ini begitu indah, sehingga maut pun jatuh cinta padanya. Cinta yang pencemburu dan posesif, yang menyambar apapun yang bisa diambilnya”

“Kau mungkin tidak percaya pada kehidupan, tapi aku tidak percaya pada kematian.”

“Kalau kita, para warga negara, tidak memberikan dukungan kepada seniman-seniman kita, berarti kita telah mengorbankan imajinasi kita di altas realitas yang kejam, dan pada akhirnya kita jadi tidak percaya pada apapun, dan mimpi-mimpi kita tidak lagi berarti.”

“If you take two steps towards God,' he used to tell me, 'God runs to you!”

“Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression.”

“…nature as a whole was an exceptionally fine illustration of science.”

“Isn’t it ironic, Richard Parker? We’re in hell yet still we’re afraid of immortality”

“Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you Richard Parker!”

“I felt like I was beating a rainbow to death.”

“How does one say in the jargon of musicology that my sould was pulled out of me and thrown up in the air, to be tossed about by the music. How does one say that I breathed, that I existed, in harmony with the ups and downs of those notes. What kind of notes both elevate and cast down, exalt and crush?”

“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.”

“The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.”

“It was frightening, the extent to which a full belly made for a good mood.”

“The men nodded vigorously at me. When they took hold of me and lifted me in their strong arms, I thought nothing of it. 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.”

“At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far.”

“Catholics have a reputation for severity, for judgment that comes down heavily.”

“The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.”

“To chose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”

“Don’t worry about being good…. Aspire to be authentic.”

“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.”

“الإيمان بالله هو انقتاح كامل, تسليم مطلق, ثقه عميقه, فعل حب حر, لكن أحياناً كان من شبه المستحيل أن أشعر بالحب. أحياناً كان قلبي يغرق بسرعة بالغضب, و الإحباط و القلق, كنت أخشى أن يغرق إيماني في قاع المحيط الهادئ فلا يعود بإمكاني انشاله”

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

“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.”

“Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.”

“To prosper, a zoo needs parliamentary government, democratic elections, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, rule of law and everything else enshrined in India's Constitution. Impossible to enjoy the animals otherwise. Long-term, bad politics is bad for business.”

“I went about the job in a direct way. I took the hatchet in both my hands and vigorously beat the fish on the head with the hammerhead (I still didn’t have the stomach to use the sharp edge). The dorado did the most extraordinary thing as it died: it began to flash all kinds of colours in rapid succession. Blue, green, red, gold, and violet flickered and shimmered neon-like on its surface as it struggled. I felt I was beating a rainbow to death.”

“The tennis challenger starts strong but soon loses confidence in his playing. The champion racks up the games. But in the final set, when the challenger has nothing left to lose, he becomes relaxed again, insouciant, daring. Suddenly he's playing like the devil and the champion must work hard to get those last points.”

“I never had problems with my fellow scientists. Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when they are not preoccupied with science.”

“But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste of death forever in his mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? -- Love. That was his answer.”

“It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.”

“Whatever the reason for wanting to escape, sane or insane, zoo detractors should realize that animals don't escape to somewhere but from something.”

“There are animals we haven't stopped by. Don't think they're harmless. Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.”

“For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out.”

“The world isn’t just the way it is. It’s how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn’t that make life a story?”

“Art is the suitcase of history, carrying the essentials. Art is the life buoy of history. Art is seed, art is memory, art is vaccine.”

“Music is a bird's answer to the noise and heaviness of words. It puts the mind in a state of exhilerated speechlessness.”

“To my mind, faith is like being in the sun. When you are in the sun, can you avoid creating a shadow? Can you shake that area of darkness that clings to you, always shaped like you, as if constantly to remind you of yourself? You can’t. This shadow is doubt. And it goes wherever you go as long as you stay in the sun. And who wouldn’t want to be in the sun?”

“The most beautiful rooms I have entered have been empty ones. Warehouses full of light and dust. Empty attics with a view. Coastlines. Prairies.”

“If literature does one thing, it makes you more empathetic by making you live other lives and feel the pain of others. Ideologues don't feel the pain of others because they haven't imaginatively got under their skins.”

“Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.”

“The main battlefield of good is not the open ground of the publis arena, but the small clearing of each heart.”

“Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love - but sometimes it was so hard to love.”

“It was a huge zoo, spread over numberless acres, big enough to require a train to explore it, though it seemed to get smaler as I grew older, train included. Now it's so small it fits in my head.”

“the senile, lecherous expression of a camel.”

“My alarm clock during my childhood was a pride of lions.”

“My greatest wish — other than salvation — was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time.”

“Afterwards, when it's all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?”

“In a healthy individual, a broken bone that has healed properly is strongest where it was once broken. You have not lost any life, Henry told himself. You will still get your fair share of years. Yet the quality of his life changed. Once you've been struck by violence, you acquire companions that never leave you entirely: Suspicion, Fear, Anxiety, Despair, Joylessness. The natural smile is taken from you and the natural pleasures you once enjoyed lose their appeal.”

“We are cynical about our own species, but less so about animals, especially wild ones. We might not shelter them from habitat destruction, but we do tend to shelter them from excessive irony.”

“In his entirely personal experience of them, English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was from the streets. Which is to stay, stab his heart and it would bleed French, slice his brain open and its convolutions would be lined with English and German, and touch his hands and they would feel Spanish.”