Quote

I chose the name Pi because it's an irrational number (one with no discernable pattern). Yet scientists use this irrational number to come to a rational understanding of the universe. To me, religion is a bit like that, irrational yet with it we come together we come to a sound understanding of the universe.

Yann Martel

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Like
Names
Scientists
Understanding
Rational
Sound
Patterns
Religion
Scientist
Universe
Number
Use
Numbers
Chose
Together
Name
Irrational
Come
Bits
Pattern

More quotes by Yann Martel

Image
My greatest wish - other than salvation - was to have a book.
Yann Martel
Image
Blessed be shock. Blessed be the part of us that protects us from too much pain and sorrow. At the heart of life is a fusebox.
Yann Martel
Image
No one dies of nausea, but it can seriously sap the will to live.
Yann Martel
Image
...for everything has a trace of the divine in it.
Yann Martel
Image
I find that movies tend to fix the aesthetics of a story in people's minds.
Yann Martel
Image
Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food is low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured.
Yann Martel
Image
Don’t you bully me with your politeness!
Yann Martel
Image
Was it the forgetfulness of old age or personal incapacity that made the man able to say please but not thank you?
Yann Martel
Image
I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.
Yann Martel
Image
Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.
Yann Martel
Image
I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality.
Yann Martel
Image
It's hard to visualize James Bond without seeing one of the actors who played him. And it's hard to visualize Harry Potter without seeing Daniel Radcliffe. A movie is so visually powerful, so overwhelming, that it tends to crowd out how you might have imagined things.
Yann Martel
Image
You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better.
Yann Martel
Image
To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity.
Yann Martel
Image
Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body. It is from there that both babies and cancers are born.
Yann Martel
Image
Stories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.
Yann Martel
Image
I ask you, is it the fig tree's fault that it's not the season for figs? What kind of thing is that to do to an innocent tree, wither it instantly?
Yann Martel
Image
Japanese-owned cargo ship Tsimtsum, flying Panamanian flag, sank July 2nd, 1977, in Pacific, four days out of Manila. Am in lifeboat. Pi Patel my name. Have some food, some water, but Bengal tiger a serious problem. Please advise family in Winnepeg, Canada. Any help very much appreciated. Thank you.
Yann Martel
Image
It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.
Yann Martel
Image
The presence of God is the finest of rewards.
Yann Martel