Life of Pi

Life of Pi.  This book… Martel’s writing… there are no words to explain what it did to me. True, it did drag on a bit in the middle. But for the amount of impact it had, I would gladly have tripled the slow bits, and still be in complete awe of it.

Below are some of my favorite quotes from the book that must be read. The last one is my favourite.

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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.

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It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.

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If you stumble about believability, what are you living for? 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?

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Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed, hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see the God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God are hat wearing Muslims.

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You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. As a result I perked up and felt much better.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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I’ll be honest about it. 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 Christ played with doubt, so must we. 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.

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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…