Skip to content

I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.

— Yann Martel Life of Pi (2001)

Another quote →

Topics

Time

More quotes by Yann Martel

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.

Life of Pi (2001)

Colonialism is a terrible bane for a people upon whom it is imposed, but a blessing for a language.

Beatrice & Virgil (2010)

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

Life of Pi (2001)

To my mind, faith is like being in the sun. When you are in the sun, can you avoid creating a shadow?

Beatrice & Virgil (2010)

When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.

All Yann Martel quotes →

You may also like

A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love (1973)

From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?"

Sanu Sharma

You can never plan the future by the past.

Edmund Burke A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,
But an eternal now does always last.

Abraham Cowley Poems (1656)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Yann Martel (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.