“When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.”
More from Yann Martel on Life
“Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can get.”
“There are animals we haven't stopped by. Don't think they're harmless. Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.”
“Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away.”
“Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous possessive love that grabs at what it can.”
“All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways.”
“There are many ways in which life's little candle can be snuffed out. A cold wind pursues us all.”
“The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity – it’s envy.”
“Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body.”
“You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.”
“I suppose in the end the whole of life becomes an act of letting go. But what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye.”
Others on Life
Jonathan Safran Foer
22 quotes“One hundred years of joy can be erased in one second”
Mitch Albom
18 quotes“Behind all your stories is always your mother's story. Because hers is where yours begin.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
16 quotes“I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.”
Henry Miller
15 quotes“We create our fate every day ... most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.”
Lord Byron
14 quotes“The great art of life is sensation to feel that we exist even in pain.”
Cormac McCarthy
14 quotes“People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn't believe in that. Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them. It didn...”
Virginia Woolf
14 quotes“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
Joseph Campbell
14 quotes“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive...”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
13 quotes“Most of us have the good or bad fortune of seeing our lives fall apart so slowly we barely notice.”
Søren Kierkegaard
13 quotes“Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.”
Margaret Atwood
13 quotes“Surviving Is the only warWe can afford”
Sarah Dessen
13 quotes“All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control....”