Most-quoted character in Life of Pi (2012): in 17 of its 31 quotes
Most scenes with: Santosh Patel (2)
With one word, my name went from an elegant French swimming pool to a stinking Indian latrine — I was "Pissing" everywhere.
The gods were my superheroes growing up. Hanuman, the monkey god, lifting an entire mountain to save his friend Lakshman. Ganesh the elephant headed, risking his life to save the honor of his mother Pārvati. Vishnu, the Supreme Soul. The Soul of all things. Vishnu sleeps, floating on the shoreless cosmic ocean, and we are the stuff of his dreams.
Set your house in order and begin for the battle to survive. Establish a strict schedule for eating, keeping watch, and getting rest. Do not drink urine or seawater. Keep busy, but avoid unnecessary exertion. The mind can be kept occupied by playing card games, Twenty Questions, or I Spy. Community singing is another surefire way to lift the spirits. Telling stories is highly recommended. Above all, don't lose hope. Few things can sap the spirit faster than seasickness. Waves are most strongly felt when a boat turns sideways to the current. A sea anchor is used as a drag to keep the boat's head to the wind. Proper use of them can increase control and reduce seasickness during rough seas.
In the zoo we fed our tigers an average of 5 kilos of meat a day. Richard Parker will be getting hungry soon. Tigers are powerful swimmers, and if he gets hungry enough, I'm afraid the little bit of water between us won't be any protection. I need to find a way to feed him. I can eat the biscuits, but God made tigers carnivores, so I must learn to catch fish. If I don't, I'm afraid his last meal will be a skinny vegetarian boy.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you Lord Vishnu. Thank you for coming in the form of a fish and saving our lives. Thank you.
Hunger can change everything you ever thought you knew about yourself.
I can't risk my life every time I have to climb on the boat for supplies. It's time to settle this. If we're going to live together, we have to learn to communicate. Maybe Richard Parker can't be tamed — but with God's will he can be trained.
I never thought a small piece of shade could bring me so much happiness. That a pile of tools, a bucket, a knife, a pencil might become my greatest treasures. Or that knowing Richard Parker was here might ever bring me peace. In times like these, I remember that he has as little experience with the real world as I do. We were both raised in a zoo by the same master. Now we've been orphaned, left to face our ultimate master together. Without Richard Parker, I would have died by now. My fear of him keeps me alert. Tending to his needs gives my life purpose.
Words are all I have left to hang on to. Everything mixed up. Fragmented. Can't tell daydreams, night dreams from reality any more.
Praise be to God. God of all worlds! The compassionate, the merciful! Come out, Richard Parker! Come out you have to see this! It's beautiful! … Don't harm yourself! He's come to us! It's a miracle! Come out and see God Richard Parker! [to the sky] Why are you scaring him? I've lost my family. I've lost everything. I surrender. What more do you want? I'm sorry Richard Parker.
We're dying, Richard Parker. I'm sorry. Can you feel the rain. God, thank you for giving me my life. I'm ready now.
Disregard Steps 1 through 3.
Why would a God do that? Why would He send his own Son to suffer for the sins of ordinary people?
Because He loves us. God made himself approachable to us — human — so we could understand Him. We can't understand God in all His perfection. But we can understand God's Son, and his suffering, as we would a brother's.
That made no sense! Sacrificing the innocent to atone for the sins of the guilty. What kind of love is that? But this Son… I couldn't get Him out of my head.
You only need to convert to three more religions, Piscine, and you will spend your life on holiday.
Are you going to Mecca this year, Swami Jesus? Or to Rome for your coronation as Pope Pius?
You stay out of this, Ravi. Just as you like cricket, Pi has his own interests.
No, Gita, Ravi has a point. You cannot follow three different religions at the same time, Piscine.
Why not?
Because, believing in everything at the same time, is the same as not believing in anything at all.
He's young, Santosh. He's still finding his way.
And how can he find his way if he does not choose a path? Listen, instead of leaping from one religion to the next, why not start with reason? In a few hundred years, science has taken us farther in understanding the universe than religion has in 10,000.
That is true. Your father is right. Science can teach us more about what is out there, but not what is in here. [touches chest]
Some eat meat, some eat vegetable. I do not expect us to all agree about everything, but I would much rather have you believe in something I don't agree with than to accept everything blindly. And that begins with thinking rationally. You understand? [Pi nods] Good.
I would like to be baptized.
You think that tiger is a friend? He is an animal, not a playmate!
Animals have souls. I have seen it in their eyes.
Thousands of meerkats on a floating carnivorous island and no one has ever seen it?
Yes. Just like I told you.
Bananas don't float.
Why are you talking about bananas?
You said the orangutan floated to you on a bundle of bananas, but bananas don't float.
Are you sure about that?
Of course they do. You try it for yourself.
In any case, we're not here to talk about the bananas or meerkats.
Look, I've just told you a long story and I'm very tired.
We're here because a Japanese cargo ship sank in the Pacific.
Something I'll never forget. I lost my whole family.
We don't mean to push you. And you have our deepest sympathies. But we have come a long way, and we are no closer to understanding why the ship sank.
Because I don't know! I was asleep, something woke me up, it could've been an explosion, I can't be sure. And then the ship sank. What else do you want from me?
A story that won't make us look like fools.
We need a simpler story for our report. One our company can understand. A story we can all believe.
So — a story without things you've never seen before. A story without surprises, without animals or islands.
Yes — the truth.
Four of us survived. The cook and the sailor were already aboard. The cook threw me a life buoy and pulled me aboard and Mother held on to some bananas and made it to the lifeboat. The cook was a disgusting man. He ate a rat. We had food enough for weeks, but he found the rat in the first few days and he killed it, dried it in the sun and ate it. He was such a brute, that man. But he was resourceful. It was his idea to build the raft to catch fish. We would have died in those first few days without him. The sailor was the same man who brought rice and gravy, the Buddhist. We didn't understand much of what he said, only that he was suffering. He had broken his leg horribly in the fall. We tried to set it best we could, but the leg became infected, and the cook said we had to do something or he'd die. The cook said he'd do it, but Mother and I had to hold the man down. And I believed him, we needed to do it. So… I kept saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry", and he just kept looking at me. His eyes were so… I'll never understand the point of that man suffering. I can still hear him. The happy Buddhist, he only ate rice and gravy. We didn't save him of course. He died. The morning after, the cook caught his first dorado and I didn't understand what he had done at first, but Mother did and I had never seen Mother so angry. "Stop whining and be happy," he said. "We need more food or we'll die. That was the whole point." "What was the whole point?" Mother asked. "You let that poor boy die in order to get bait, you monster!" The cook got furious. He started towards her with his fist raised, and Mother slapped him hard, right across the face. I was stunned. I thought he was going to kill her right there and then. But he didn't. The cook didn't stop at bait either, no. The sailor… he went the same way the rat went. The cook was a resourceful man. It was a week later that he… Because of me. Because I couldn't hold on to a stupid turtle. It slipped out of my hands and swam away. And the cook came up and he punched me on the side of my head and my teeth clacked and I saw stars. I thought he was going to hit me again, but Mother started pounding on him with her fists screaming, "Monster, monster!" She yelled at me to got to the raft. I thought she was going with me, or I'd never have… I didn't know why I didn't make her go first. I think about that every day. I jumped over and turned back just as the knife came out. There wasn't anything I could do. I couldn't look away. He threw her body overboard. And then the sharks came, and I saw what they… I saw. The next day I killed him. He didn't even fight back. He knew he had gone too far, even by his own standards. He left out the knife on the bench and I did to him what he did to the sailor. He was such an evil man, but worse still, he brought out the evil in me. I have to live with that. I was alone in a life boat, drifting across the Pacific Ocean, and I survived.
After that, they had no more questions. The investigators didn't seem to like the story, exactly, but they thanked me, they wished me well, and they left.
So the stories — both the zebra and the sailor broke their leg. And the hyena killed the zebra and the orangutan, so the hyena is the cook, the sailor is the zebra, your mother is the orangutan, and you're the tiger.
