Yann Martel, Life of Pi

"The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity – it’s envy."

"So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?"

"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."

"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life."

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

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

"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."

"When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival."

"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. 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 do 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."

"It's not atheists who get stuck in my caw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for awhile. We all must pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we... But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as means of transportation."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression."

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

"Mockery be damned, my urine looked delicious."