Life of Pi, Part 2

Reading a book as good and memorable as this one deserves a second post. The copy of the book I read is overdue at the library and I am leaving for Hawaii in exactly 12 hours (my brother is getting married there on Saturday and we're staying for the week) - needless to say, I am a very busy mama trying to get myself and all 3 kids ready to be shipped off to various friends' homes for the week. (That's right: Hawaii sans kids! Wooohooooo!) Alas, the book is overdue. So, this morning in all my fury and hurry to check everything off my list I took my stack of children's books, videos and the copy of Life of Pi to the libary to return. I stood at the little "shute" letting the boys slide the books in one at a time and I took a good look at my beloved book (that didn't belong to me). I realized I had folded down 4 or 5 pages because they held quotes I had intended to write down and remember forever, thus immortalizing the savory experience I had in January of 2006 of reading Life of Pi. And there I was at the library return shute, overdue library book in hand. I couldn't let it go. I had to bring it home and write them down lest I forget forever! After all...

" If we, as citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams." - page xi (author's note)

"There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, 'Business as usual.' But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The dgree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening. It is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside." - page 89

"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 unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling clam, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread." - page 203 (depressing, but true...don't you think?)

"What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell. I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape. For example-I wonder-could you tell my jumbled story in exactly one hundred chapters, not one more, not one less? I'll tell you, that's one thing I hate about my nickname, the way that number runs on forever. It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go."
- page 360

"Mr. Okamoto: 'But for the purposes of our investigation, we would like to know what really happened.'
Patel: 'What really happened?'
'Yes.'
'So, you want another story?'
'Uhh...no. We would like to know what really happened.'
'Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?'
'Uhh...perhaps in English. In Japanese a story would have an element of invention in it. We don't want any invention. We want the "straight facts", as you say in English.'
'Isn't telling about something --using words, English or Japanese --already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world aleady something of an invention?'
'Uhh...'
'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?' "

Now I can return my library book and get on with my tropical vacation. :) Don't miss me too much!