“We are cynical about our own species, but less so about animals, especially wild ones. We might not shelter them from habitat… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“I quite deliberately dressed wild animals in tame costumes of my imagination.” — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“One might even argue that if an animal could choose with intelligence, it would opt for living in a zoo, since the… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“Whatever the reason for wanting to escape, sane or insane, zoo detractors should realize that animals don't escape to somewhere but from… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
I like using animals because they help suspend my reader's disbelief. We have certain ideas about dentists. We don't have many ideas… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“I don't mean to defend zoos. Close them all down if you want (and let us hope that what wildlife remains can… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“Tigers, indeed all animals, do not favour violence as a means of settling scores. When animals fight, it is with the intent… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
Socially inferior animals are the ones that make the most strenuous, resourceful efforts to get to know their keepers. They prove to… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“We are random animals. That is who we are, and we have only ourselves, nothing more--there is no greater relationship.” — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
[The taxidermist is] a historian, dealing with an animal's past; the zookeeper is a politician, dealing with an animal's present; and everyone… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
Much hostile and aggressive behaviour among animals is the expression of social insecurity. — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“Now comes the difficult part: you must provoke the animal that is afflicting you. Tiger, rhinoceros, ostrich, wild boar, brown bear- no… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“There are many examples of animals coming to surprising living arrangements...where an animal takes a human being or another animal to be… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
The animals might embody certain traits. We think of tigers as being ferocious, etc. But to my mind, it was the other… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists.” — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. A good-natured smile is forever on its lips...I… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“A good zoo is a place of carefully worked-out coincidence: exactly where an animal says to us, "Stay out!"...we say to it,… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man. — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
There are animals we haven't stopped by. Don't think they're harmless. Life will defend itself no matter how small it is. — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“It’s a big ocean crossed by busy ships. I went slowly, observing much.” — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“The word isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it,… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“Remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left.” — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“I must say a word about fear. It's is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary,… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves,… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
High calls low and low calls high. I tell you, if you were in such dire straits as I was, you too would elevate… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“Or rather, since Christians are so fond of capital letters, a Story.” — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“Progress is unstoppable. It is a drumbeat to which we must all march. Technology helps and good ideas spread - these are two laws… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence were… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“I never had problems with my fellow scientists. Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
Books are something social - a writer speaking to a reader - so I think making the reading of a book the center of… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image