536 Quotes by Yann Martel

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

..the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.

The sad fact is there are no natural deaths, despite what doctors say. Every death is felt by someone as a murder, the unjust taking of a loved being. And even the luckiest of us will encounter at least one murder in our own lives: our own. It is our fate. We all live a murder mystery of which we are the victim.

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.

The indifference of the many, combined with the active hatred of the few, has sealed the fate of animals.

The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists.

I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point or a lion merely turning its head. But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it...I spent more hours than I can count a quiet witness to the highly mannered, manifold expressions of life that grace our planet. It is something so bright, loud, weird and delicate as to stupefy the senses.

My developing sense was that the foundation of a story is an emotional foundation. If a story does not work emotionally, it does not work at all.

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.