Yann Martel Zitate

seite 4

„Was für ein Schlag, wenn das Herz eines Menschen mit so etwas fertig werden muss!
Wer einen Bruder verliert, der verliert jemanden, mit dem er gemeinsam alt werden konnte, jemanden, der ihm eine Schwägerin, Nichten und Neffen bescheren sollte, Menschen, die den Baum eines Lebens bevölkern und ihm neue Zweige geben sollen.
Den Vater zu verlieren heißt den zu verlieren, der dem Leben die Richtung gibt, denjenigen, zu dem man geht, wenn man in Not ist, der einen trägt und erhält, wie ein Stamm die Äste eines Baumes trägt.
Und wenn man die Mutter verliert, das ist, als verlöre man die Sonne am Himmel.“

„Und dann war da die Frau, der ein Löwe den Sari auszog. Sie drehte sich wie ein Jojo, denn dem tödlichen Ende zog sie die tödliche Schande dann doch vor. […] Verletzt wurde sie nicht; zahlreiche Männer eilten begeistert zu Hilfe.“

„Ich hatte nicht viel Ahnung von [der christlichen] Religion. Es gab kaum Götter, und sie galt als gewalttätig. Allerdings hatte sie gute Schulen.“

„Machen Sie weiter, bis das Tier, das Ihnen zusetzt - ob Tiger, ob Rhinozeros - grün vor Seekranheit ist. Sie müssen hören, wie es sich die Seele aus dem Leibe spuckt.“

„Der erste Schritt zum Überleben ist ein offenes Auge dafür, was zur Hand ist und was als Nächstes getan werden muss. Wer in müßiger Hoffnung auf Hilfe wartet, der vertut sein Leben mit Träumerei.“

„Es sollte anders kommen als wir dachten, aber was kann man da schon machen? Man muss das Leben nehmen, wie es kommt, und sehen, dass man das Beste daraus macht.“

„I underestimated her. I under-estimated her grit. She“

“Socially inferior animals are the ones that make the most strenuous, resourceful efforts to get to know their keepers. They prove to be the ones most faithful to them…it is a fact commonly known in the trade.”

“Bapu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God.”

“If you are pitched into misery, remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left.”

“Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths.”

“Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time." Page 212.”

“There were many seas. The sea roared like a tiger. The sea whispered in your ear like a friend telling you secrets. The sea clinked like small change in a pocket. The sea thundered like avalanches. The sea hissed like sandpaper working on wood. The sea sounded like someone vomiting. The sea was dead silent.”

“An apple resists being eaten. An apple is not eaten, it is conquered. The crunchiness of a pear is far more appealing. It is giving and fragile. To eat a pear is akin to … kissing.”

“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.”

“If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?”

“My greatest wish — other than salvation — was to have a book.”

“Here was irrefutable proof that he was using the Holocaust to speak of the extermination of animal life. Doomed creatures that could not speak for themselves were being given the voice of a most articulate people who had been similarly doomed. He was seeing the tragic fate of animals through the tragic fate of Jews. The Holocaust as allegory.”

“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.”

“"Bapu Gandhi said, 'All religions are true.' I just want to love God," I blurted out, and looked down, red in the face.”

“[The taxidermist is] a historian, dealing with an animal's past; the zookeeper is a politician, dealing with an animal's present; and everyone else is a citizen who must decide on that animal's future (…) The indifference of the many, combined with the active hatred of the few, has sealed the fate of animals.”

“It was Richard Parker who calmed me down. It is the irony of this story that the one who scared me witless to start with was the very same who brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even wholeness.”

“Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field.”

“Then Richard Parker, companion of my torment, awful, fierce thing that kept me alive, moved forward and disappeared forever from my life.”