Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, is a story of faith and survival.
Pi had a difficult childhood in India but found peace in religion and zoology.
Pi’s faith in God is tested when stranded in a lifeboat with a dangerous Bengal Tiger.
Life of Pi quotes with page numbers and Chapters in chronological order.
Life Of Pi Quotes With Page Numbers
Author’s Note
“That’s what fiction is about, isn’t it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, Page VIII
“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.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, Page XII
Life Of Pi Part One Quotes: Toronto and Pondicherry
“As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 1, Page 4
“The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. A good-natured smile is forever on its lips…I have seen that smile with my own eyes. I am not one given to projecting human traits and emotions onto animals, but many a time during that month in Brazil, looking up at a sloth in repose, I felt I was in the presence of upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer, wise beings whose intense imaginative lives were beyond the reach of scientific probing.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 1, Page 4,5
“When you’ve suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 1, Page 5
“You may not believe in life, but I don’t believe in death. … 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.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 1, Page 5,6
“I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he’s not careful.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 1, Page 6
“I’ve never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart. I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. The pain is like an axe that chops my heart. ”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 1, Page 6
“I love Canada…It is a great country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 1, Page 6
“My alarm clock during my childhood was a pride of lions.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 4, Page 14
“If you went to a home, kicked down the front door, chased the people who lived there out into the street and said, “Go! You are free! Free as a bird! Go! Go!” — do you think they would shout and dance for joy? They wouldn’t. Birds are not free. The people you’ve just evicted would sputter, “With what right do you throw us out? This is our home. We own it. We have lived here for years. We’re calling the police, you scoundrel.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 4, Page 17
“A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 4, Page 18
“One might even argue that if an animal could choose with intelligence, it would opt for living in a zoo, since the major difference between a zoo and the wild is the absence of parasites and enemies and the abundance of food in the first, and their respective abundance and scarcity in the second. Think about it yourself. Would you rather be put up at the Ritz with free room service and unlimited access to a doctor or be homeless without a soul to care for you?…
But I don’t insist. 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 illusions about freedom plague them both.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 4, Pages 18,19
“I know zoos are no longer in people’s good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 4, Page 19
“I explore it now in the only place left for it, my memory.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 4, Page 19
“It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 5, Page 20
“It seems to be a law of human nature that those who live by the sea are suspicious of swimmers, just as those who live in the mountains are suspicious of mountain climbers.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 5, Page 22
“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.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 5, Page 24
“Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 7, Page 25
“Reason is my prophet and it tells me that as a watch stops, so we die. It’s the end. If the watch doesn’t work properly, it must be fixed here and now by us.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Character: Mr. Kumar), Chapter 7, Page 28
“I was more afraid that in a few words thrown out he might destroy something that I loved. What if his words had the effect of polio on me? What a terrible disease that must be if it could kill God in a man.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 7, Page 28
“If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 7, Page 28
“To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 7, Page 28
“We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 8, Page 29
“Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 8, Page 31
“Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Character: Santosh Patel) Chapter 8, Page 38
“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.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 10, Page 41
“…animals don’t escape from somewhere but from something”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 10, Page 41
“If you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside down and shook it you would be amazed at the animals that fall out: badgers, wolves, boa constrictors, crocodiles, ostriches, baboons, capybaras, wild boars, leopards, manatees, ruminants, in untold numbers. There is no doubt in my mind that that feral giraffes and feral hippos have been living in Tokyo for generations without seeing a soul.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 10, Page 42
“…if you fall into a lion’s pit, the reason the lion will tear you to pieces is not because it’s hungry-be assured, zoo animals are amply fed-or because it’s bloodthirsty, but because you’ve invaded it’s territory.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 13, Page 43
“…the trainer better make sure he always remains super alpha. He will pay dearly if he unwittingly slips to beta ”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 13, Page 43
“Socially inferior animals are the ones that make the most strenuous, resourceful efforts to get to know their keepers. They prove to be the ones most faithful to them…it is a fact commonly known in the trade.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 14, Page 45
“We are all born like Catholics, aren’t we—in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 16, Page 47
“A germ of religious exaltation, no bigger than a mustard seed, was left to germinate. It has never stopped growing since that day.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 16, Page 47
“I am a Hindu because of sculptured cones of red kumkum powder and baskets of yellow turmeric nuggets, because of garlands of flowers and pieces of broken coconut, because of the clanging of bells to announce one’s arrival to God, because of the whine of the reedy nadaswaram and the beating of drums, because of the patter of bare feet against stone floors down dark corridors pierced by shafts of sunlight, because of the fragrance of incense, because of flames of arati lamps circling in the darkness, because of bhajans being sweetly sung, because of elephants standing around to bless, because of colourful murals telling colourful stories, because of foreheads carrying, variously signified, the same word – faith.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 16, Page 47
“…for everything has a trace of the divine in it.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 16, Page 48
“The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table. That which sustains the universe beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression, is the same thing. The finite within the infinite, the infinite within the finite.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 16, Pages 48, 49
“The paths to liberation are numerous, but the bank along the way is always the same, the Bank of Karma, where the liberation account of each of us is credited or debited depending on our actions.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 16, Page 49
“I am reminded of a story of Lord Krishna when he was a cowherd. Every night he invites the milkmaids to dance with him in the forest. They come and they dance. The night is dark, the fire in their midst roars and crackles, the beat of the music gets ever faster – the girls dance and dance and dance with their sweet lord, who has made himself so abundant as to be in the arms of each and every girl. But the moment the girls become possessive, the moment each one imagines that Krishna is her partner alone, he vanishes. So it is that we should not be jealous of God.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 16, Page 49
“Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat wearing Muslims.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 16, Page 49
“Or rather, since Christians are so fond of capital letters, a Story.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 17, Page 53
“It’s morning in Bethany and God is hungry God wants His breakfast. He comes to a fig tree. It’s not the season for figs so the tree has no figs. God is peeved. The Son mutters “May you never bear fruit again ” and instantly the fig tree withers. So says Matthew backed up by Mark.
I ask you is it the fig tree’s fault that it’s not the season for figs What kind of thing is that to do to an innocent fig tree whither it instantly
I couldn’t get Him out of my head. Still can’t. I spent three solid days thinking about Him. The more He bothered me the less I could forget Him. And the more I learned about Him the less I wanted to leave Him.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 17, Pages 56, 57
“Christianity is a religion in a rush. Look at the world created in seven days. Even on a symbolic level, that’s creation in a frenzy. To one born in a religion where the battle for a single soul can be a relay race run over many centuries, with innumerable generations passing along the baton, the quick resolution of Christianity has a dizzying effect. If Hinduism flows placidly like the Ganges, then Christianity bustles like Toronto at rush hour. It is religion as swift as a swallow, as urgent as an ambulance. It turns on a dime, expresses itself in the instant. In a moment you are lost or saved. Christianity stretches back through the ages, but in essence it exists only at one time: right now.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 17, Page 57
“Whoever meets Christ in good faith is a Christian.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Character: Father Martin), Chapter 17, Page 57
“I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion.
The mosque was truly an open construction, to God and to breeze. We sat cross-legged listening to the imam until the time came to pray. Then the random pattern of sitters disappeared as we stood and arranged ourselves shoulder to shoulder in rows, every space ahead being filled by someone from behind until every line was solid and we were row after row of worshippers. It felt good to bring my forehead to the ground. Immediately it felt like a deeply religious contact.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 19, Page 61
“If you take two steps towards God,’ he used to tell me, ‘God runs to you!”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Character: Muslim worshiper), Page 61, Chapter 20
“The presence of God is the finest of rewards.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 20, Page 63
“I can well imagine an athiest’s last words: “White, white! L-L-Love! My God!” – and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying “Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain,” and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 22, Page 64
“God is universal,” spluttered the priest.
The imam nodded strong approval. “There is only one God.”
“And with their one god Muslims are always causing troubles and provoking riots. The proof of how bad Islam is, is how uncivilized Muslims are,: pronounced the pandit.
“Says the slave-driver of the cast system,” huffed the imam. “Hindus enslave people and worship dressed-up dolls.”
“They are golden calf lovers. They kneel before the cows,” the priest chimed in.
“While Christians kneel before a white man! They are flunkies of a foreign god. They are nightmare of all nonwhite people.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Characters: Pi Patel and Father Martin), Chapter 23, Page 68
“Bapu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Character: Pi Patel), Chapter 23, Page 69
“So, Swami Jesus, will you go on the hajj this year?” Ravi said, bringing the palms of his hands together in front of his face in a reverent namaskar. “Does Mecca beckon?” He crossed himself. “Or will it be to Rome for your coronation as the next Pope Pius?” He drew in the air a Greek letter, making clear the spelling of his Mockery. “Have you found time yet to get the end of your pecker cut off and become a Jew? At the rate you’re going, if you go to temple on Thursday, mosque on Friday, synagogue on Saturday and church on Sunday, you only need to convert to three more religions to be on holiday for the rest of your life.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Character: Ravi Patel), Chapter 24, Page 70
“And that wasn’t the end of it. There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, “Business as usual.” But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.
These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God’s, that the self-righteous should rush.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 25, Pages 70, 71
“If there’s only one nation in the sky, shouldn’t all passports be valid for it?”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Character: Gita Patel), Chapter 26, Page 74
“Progress is unstoppable. It is a drumbeat to which we must all march. Technology helps and good ideas spread – these are two lows of nature. If you don’t let technology help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaurhood! I am utterly convinced of this.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Character: Pi Patel), Chapter 27, Page 75
“Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they’ve known for a great unknown beyond the horizon? Why climb this Mount Everest of formalities that makes you feel like a beggar? Why enter this jungle of foreignness where everything is new, strange and difficult?
The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 29, Page 77
“A zoo is a cultural institution. Like a public library, like a museum, it is at the service of popular education and science. And by that token, not much of a money-making venture for the Greater Good and the Greater Profit are not compatible aims.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 29, Page 78
“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.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 29, Page 79
“Because of the gnawing feeling that no matter how hard they work their efforts will yield nothing, that what they build up in one year will be torn down in one day by others.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 29, Page 79
“There are many examples of animals coming to surprising living arrangements…where an animal takes a human being or another animal to be one of it’s kind.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 32, Page 84
“Nil magnum nisi bonum. No greatness without goodness.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 33, Page 87
“Things didn’t turn out the way they used to, but what can you do? You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 35, Page 91
Life of Pi Part Two Quotes: The Pacific Ocean
“I am to suffer hell without any account from heaven?”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 37, Page 98
“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, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 38, Page 102
“It was as unbelievable as the moon catching fire.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 38, Page 103
“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.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 38, Page 105
“I was alone and orphaned, in the middle of the Pacific, hanging on to an oar, an adult tiger in front of me, sharks beneath me, a storm raging about me.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 40, Page 107
“How bitterly glad I am to see you. You bring joy and pain in equal measure. Joy because you are with me, but pain because it won’t be for long. What do you know about the sea? Nothing. What do I know about the sea? Nothing. Without a driver this bus is lost. Our lives are over. Come aboard if your destination is oblivion– It should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat, if you want. But it’s a sad view. Oh enough of this disembling. Let me say plainly: I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you. Not the spiders, please.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Character: Pi Patel), Chapter 42, Page 111
“When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 45, Page 120
“It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I’ve made none the champion.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 46, Page 123
“To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures who people the tree of your life and give it new branches. To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It is like losing–I’m sorry, I would rather not go on.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 46, Page 127
“Of hunger and thirst, thirst is the greater imperative.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 48, Page 133
“You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 49, Page 134
“If thirst can be so taxing that even God Incarnate complains about it, imagine the effect on a regular human.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 49, Page 134
“How true is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 50, Page 139
“My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 51, Page 142
“I tell you, to be drunk on alcohol is disgraceful, but to be drunk on water is noble and ecstatic.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 51, Page 143
“Oncoming death is terrible enough, but worse still is oncoming death with time to spare, time in which all the happiness that was yours and all the happiness that might have been yours becomes clear to you. You see with utter lucidity all that you are losing.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 53, Page 147
“I was giving up. I would have given up – if a voice hadn’t made itself heard in my heart. The voice said “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. The amazing will be seen everyday. I will put in all the hard work necessary. Yes, so long as God is with me, I will not die. Amen.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 53, Page 148
“My face set to a grim and determined expression. I speak in all modesty as I say this, but I discovered at that moment that I have a fierce will to live. It’s not something evident, in my experience. Some of us give up on life with only a resigned sigh. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others – and I am one of those – never give up. We fight and fight and fight. We fight no matter the cost of battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the every end. It’s not a question of courage. It’s something constitutional, an inability to let go. It may be nothing more than life-hungry stupidity.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 53, Page 148
“…if there’s one thing more dangerous than a healthy animal, it’s an injured animal.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 54, Page 158
“It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 56, Page 161
“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. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 56, Page 161
“For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. 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.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 56, Page 162
“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.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 58, Page 168-69
“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.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 60, Page 177
“For the first time I noticed – as I would notice repeatedly during my ordeal, between one throe of agony and the next – that my suffering was taking place in a grand setting. I saw my suffering for what it was, finite and insignificant, and I was still. My suffering did not fit anywhere, I realized. And I could accept this. It was all right.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 60, Page 177
“Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness–how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I’ve got!”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 60, Page 177
“Blessed be shock. Blessed be the part of us that protects us from too much pain and sorrow. At the heart of life is a fusebox.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 61, Page 180
“I wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain. I was sixteen years old, a harmless boy, bookish and religious, and now I had blood on my hands. It’s a terrible burden to carry. All sentient life is sacred.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 61, Page 183
“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.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 61, Page 185
“You may be astonished that in such a short period of time I could go from weeping over the muffled killing of a flying fish to gleefully bludgeoning to death a dorado. I could explain it by arguing that profiting from a pitiful flying fish’s navigational mistake made me shy and sorrowful, while the excitement of actively capturing a great dorado made me sanguinary and self-assured. But in point of fact the explanation lies elsewhere. It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 61, Page 185
“Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 63, Page 192
“No one dies of nausea, but it can seriously sap the will to live.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 71, Page 205
“I cannot think of a better way to spread the faith. No thundering from a pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book of scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little girl’s kiss on your cheek.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 73, Page 208
“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. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up.
At such moments I tried to elevate myself. I would touch the turban I had made with the remnants of my shirt and I would say aloud, “THIS IS GOD’S HAT!”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 74, Pages 208-09
“Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 74, Page 209
“The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other. The sea is without a wrinkle. There is not a whisper of wind. The hours last forever. You are so bored you sink into a state of apathy close to a coma. Then the sea becomes rough and your emotions are whipped into a frenzy. Yet even these two opposites do not remain distinct. In your boredom there are elements of terror: you break down into tears; you are filled with dread; you scream; you deliberately hurt yourself And in the grip of terror—the worst storm—you yet feel boredom, a deep weariness with it all.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 78, Page 217
“Only death consistently excites your emotions, whether contemplating when life is safe and stale, or fleeing it when life is threatened and precious”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 78, Page 217
“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.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 78, Page 217
“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.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 85, Page 233
“Can there be any happiness greater than the happiness of salvation?”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 86, Page 234
“Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 90, Page 242
“I have read that there are two fears that cannot be trained out of us: the startle reaction upon hearing an unexpected noise, and vertigo. I would like to add a third, to wit, the rapid and direct approch of a known killer”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 92, Page 263
“I preferred to set off and perish in search of my own kind than to live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and spiritual death on this murderous island.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 92, Pages 282-83
“High calls low and low calls high. I tell you, if you were in such dire straits as I was, you too would elevate your thoughts. The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar. ”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 93, Page 283
“It was natural that, bereft and desperate as I was, in the throes of unremitting suffering. I should turn to God”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 93, Pages 283-84
“Then Richard Parker, companion of my torment, awful, fierce thing that kept me alive, moved forward and disappeared forever from my life.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 94, Page 285
“I was weeping because Richard Parker had left me so unceremoniously. What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell…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”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 94, Page 285
“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.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 94, Page 285
“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 with you.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 94, Pages 285, 86
Life Of Pi Part Three Quotes: Benito Judrez Infirmary, Tomatlan, Mexico
“If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn’t love hard to believe?”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 99, Page 297
“I applied my reason at every moment. Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 99, Page 298
“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?”
~Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Pi Patel as the Narrator), Chapter 99, Page 302
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, is a story of faith and survival.
Tired of being teased about his name, Piscine Moitar Patel adopted the nickname “Pi.”
Pi was a young boy who suffered in India. But he found peace in religion and zoology.
Pi was raised as a Hindu, but he explored Christianity and then Islam and eventually practiced all three religions simultaneously.
Pi’s father ran the Pondicherry Zoo. One day, he warned Pi and his older brother, Ravi, about the dangers of the zoo animals.
His father had them watch a goat get fed to a hungry tiger so they would never forget this lesson.
Pi’s family plans to move to Toronto on a cargo ship with some zoo animals. After the ship sinks, Pi finds himself stranded in a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a dangerous Bengal Tiger.
Pi’s faith in God is tested as he attempts to survive the impossible.
