Iswarya > Iswarya's Quotes

“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 has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“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...”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“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?”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“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.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“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?”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“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.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“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.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“Why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch?”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.”
― Yann Martel

“A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“Conceit spoils the finest genius.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“I almost wish I hadn't any conscience, it's so inconvenient. If I didn't care about doing the right and didn't feel uncomfortable when doing wrong, I should get on capitally.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream forever.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Too excited to be genuinely happy”
― James Joyce, Dubliners

“It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year.
Scout”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Things are never as bad as they seem.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I'm gone which would not have happened if I had not come.”
― Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

“What you were is forever who you are.”
― Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

“For an instant, silence, noisier than a waterfall.”
― Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

“Life again refused to remain lifesized”
― Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

“...because silence, too, has an echo, hollower and longer-lasting than the reverberations of any sound.”
― Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

“Strong people write bad stories.”
― Manu Joseph, The Illicit Happiness of Other People