Gnoe Graasland

“It's a tiny, inexpungable parcel of fear, yet not incapacitating nor even a source of much worry. He never feels dread or anxiety with Odo, never anything so lingering. It rather goes like this: The ape appears without the least sound, seemingly out of nowhere, and among the emotions Peter feels--the surprise, the wonder, the pleasure, the joy--there is a pulse of fear.He can do nothing about it except wait for the pulse to go away. That is a lesson he has learned, to treat fear as a powerful but topical emotion. He is afraid only when he needs to be.”
― Yann Martel

“Without your sheep, you would have no livelihood, you would die. This dependency creates a sort of equality, doesn't it? Not individually, but collectively. As a group, you and your sheep are at opposite sides of a seesaw, and somewhere in between there is a fulcrum. You must maintain the balance. In that sense, we are no better than they.”
― Yann Martel, The High Mountains of Portugal

“Peter has learned the difficult animal skill of doing nothing. He's learned to unshackle himself of the race of time and contemplate time itself. [..] It's a lesson hard learned, just to sit there and be.”
― Yann Martel, The High Mountains of Portugal

“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