Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?

— Yann Martel

Don't you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?

— Yann Martel

Even when God seemed to have abandoned me, he was watching. Even when he seemed indifferent to my suffering, he was watching. And when I was beyond all hope of saving, he gave me rest. Then he gave me a sign to continue my journey.

— Yann Martel

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.

— Yann Martel

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.

— Yann Martel

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

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

Grief is a disease. We were riddled with its pockmarks, tormented by its fevers, broken by its blows. It ate at us like maggots, attacked us like lice-we scratched ourselves to the edge of madness. In the process we became as withered as crickets, as tired as old dogs.

— Yann Martel

...he found it where he should have looked first, on the Internet, which is a net indeed, one that can be cast further than the eye can see and be retrieved no matter how heavy the hall, its magical mesh never breaking under the strain but always bringing in the most amazing catch.

— Yann Martel

Henry had written a novel because there was a hole in him that needed filling, a question that needed answering, a patch of canvas that needed painting—that blend of anxiety, curiosity and joy that is at the origin of art—and he had filled the hole, answered the question, splashed color on the canvas, all done for himself, because he had to. Then complete strangers told him that his book had filled a hole in them, had answered a question, had brought color to their lives. The comfort of strangers, be it a smile, a pat on the shoulder or a word of praise, is truly a comfort.

— Yann Martel