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"Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror."
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"If you have never seen a masterpiece, look in the mirror."

"For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."

"When you truly face your pain you will only see yourself. Your fear was always you."

"If there is wrong [ill] on the inside, the outside will appear wrong. Therefore, you should inquire within 'why am I bothered, when others are not? So there must be wrong within me only."

"I am blind to the very things that make for our own peace."

"One who cannot dance must not blame the song."

"Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self."

"Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage."

"Everything that goes into my mouth seems to make me fat, everything that comes out of my mouth embarrasses me."
Explore more quotes by Yann Martel

"You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better."

"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?"

"Trees were not hard, irritable things, but discreetly orgasmic beings moaning at a level too deep for our brutish ears. And flowers were quick explosive orgasms, like making love in the shower."

"There are animals we haven't stopped by. Don't think they're harmless. Life will defend itself no matter how small it is."

"To her, writing is making stock and reading is sipping broth, but only the spoken word is the full roasted chicken."

"Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer."

"Let that be a reminder to you that the past is one thing, but what we make of it, the conclusions we draw, is another. History can be many things, depending on how we read it, just as the future can be many things, depending on how we live it. There is no inevitability to any historical occurrence, only what people will allow to take place. And it is by dreaming first that we get to new realities."

"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."
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