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

— Yann Martel

Aging is not easy, Senghor Castro. It's a terrible, incurable pathology. And great love is another pathology. It starts well. It's a most desirable disease. One wouldn't want to do without it. It's like yeast that corrupts the juice of grapes. One loves, one loves, one persists in loving-the incubation period can be very long- and then, with death, comes the heart break. Love must always meet its unwanted end.

— Yann Martel

A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.

— Yann Martel

All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in a strange, sometimes inexplicable ways.

— Yann Martel

All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways.

— Yann Martel

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

And so, when she heard if Hare Krishna's, she didn't hear right. She heard "Hairless Christians", and that is what they were to her for many years. When I corrected her, I told her in fact she was not so wrong; that 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

A plain is what a mountain aims to be: the closest you can come to being in outer space while yet having your feet on this planet.

— Yann Martel

As for fame, fame felt like nothing. Fame was not a sensation like love or hunger or loneliness, welling from within and invisible to the outside eye. It was rather entirely external, coming from the minds of others. It existed in the way people looked at him or behaved towards him. In that, being famous was no different from being gay, or Jewish, or from a visible minority: you are who you are, and then people project onto you some notion they have.

— Yann Martel

As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound.

— Yann Martel