Life of Pi 2012 quotes

Adult Pi Patel

By the time we reached the Mexican shore, I was afraid to let go of the boat. My strength was gone. I was so weak. I was afraid that in two feet of water, so close to deliverance, I would drown. I struggled to shore and fell upon the sand. It was warm and soft, like pressing my face against the cheek of God. And somewhere, two eyes were smiling at having me there. I was so spent, I could hardly move. And so, Richard Parker went ahead of me. He stretched his legs and walked along the shore. At the edge of the jungle, he stopped. I was certain he was going to look back at me, flatten his ears to his head, growl. That he would bring our relationship to an end in some way. But he just stared ahead into the jungle. And then, Richard Parker, my fierce companion, the terrible one who kept me alive, disappeared forever from my life. After a few hours, a member of my own species found me. He left and returned with a group who carried me away. I wept like a child. Not because I was overwhelmed at having survived, although I was. I was weeping because Richard Parker left me so unceremoniously. It broke my heart. You know my father was right. Richard Parker never saw me as his friend. After all we had been through, he didn't even look back. But I have to believe there was more in his eyes than my own reflection staring back at me. I know it. I felt it. Even if I can't prove it. You know, I've left so much behind, my family, the zoo, India, Anandi. 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. I was never able to thank my father for all I learnt from him. To tell him without all his lessons I would never have survived. I know that Richard Parker is a tiger, but I wish I had said, "It's over. We survived. Thank you, for saving my life. I love you, Richard Parker, you'll always be with me. May God be with you."

Writer

I don't know what to say.

Adult Pi Patel

It's hard to believe isn't it.

Writer

It is a lot to take in, to figure out what it all means.

Adult Pi Patel

Oh, if it happened it happened. Why does it have to mean anything?

Writer

Some of it is pretty incredible.

Adult Pi Patel

Can I ask you something? I've told you two stories about what happened out on the ocean. Neither explains what caused the sinking of the ship, and no one can prove which story is true and which is not. In both stories, the ship sinks, my family dies, and I suffer.

Writer

True.

Adult Pi Patel

So which story do you prefer?

Writer

The one with the tiger. That's the better story.

Adult Pi Patel

Thank you. And so it goes with God.

Writer

Mamaji was right. It's an amazing story. Will you really let me write it?

Adult Pi Patel

Of course. Isn't that why Mamaji sent you here after all? My wife is here. Do you want to stay for dinner? She's an incredible cook.

Writer

I didn't know you had a wife.

Adult Pi Patel

And a cat and two children.

Writer

So your story does have a happy ending.

Adult Pi Patel

Well, that's up to you. The story is yours now.

Adult Pi Patel

What has Mamaji already told you?

Writer

He said you had a story that would make me believe in God.

Adult Pi Patel

He would say that about a nice meal. As for God, I can only tell you my story — you'll then decide for yourself what you believe.

Writer

Fair enough.

My sons and I are vegetarians. Do you have anything…? No, no, no. Not more gravy.

Cook

You don't want gravy?

No, I want something vegetarian.

Cook

Oh. No problem.

Santosh Patel

She asked if you have something vegetarian.

Cook

The cow that produced this liver was vegetarian, the pigs that went into these sausages were vegetarian.

Santosh Patel

Very funny. But my wife doesn't eat liver.

Cook

Then she can eat the sausage, the rice, and the gravy. Or you can cook your own food.

Santosh Patel

How dare you talk to my wife like that?

Cook

Here's your rice. I cook for sailors, not curry-eaters.

Santosh Patel

What did you say?!

Cook

Let go of me! Who do you think you are? You're nothing but a servant! I feed people! You feed monkeys!

Older Insurance investigator

Thousands of meerkats on a floating carnivorous island and no one has ever seen it?

Pi Patel

Yes. Just like I told you.

Younger Insurance investigator

Bananas don't float.

Older Insurance investigator

Why are you talking about bananas?

Younger Insurance investigator

You said the orangutan floated to you on a bundle of bananas, but bananas don't float.

Older Insurance investigator

Are you sure about that?

Pi Patel

Of course they do. You try it for yourself.

Older Insurance investigator

In any case, we're not here to talk about the bananas or meerkats.

Pi Patel

Look, I've just told you a long story and I'm very tired.

Older Insurance investigator

We're here because a Japanese cargo ship sank in the Pacific.

Pi Patel

Something I'll never forget. I lost my whole family.

Older Insurance investigator

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.

Pi Patel

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?

Younger Insurance investigator

A story that won't make us look like fools.

Older Insurance investigator

We need a simpler story for our report. One our company can understand. A story we can all believe.

Pi Patel

So — a story without things you've never seen before. A story without surprises, without animals or islands.

Older Insurance investigator

Yes — the truth.

Pi Patel

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.

Adult Pi Patel

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.

Writer

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.

Pi Patel

Why would a God do that? Why would He send his own Son to suffer for the sins of ordinary people?

Priest

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.

Adult Pi Patel

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.

Santosh Patel

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.

Santosh Patel

No, Gita, Ravi has a point. You cannot follow three different religions at the same time, Piscine.

Pi Patel

Why not?

Santosh Patel

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.

Santosh Patel

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]

Santosh Patel

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.

Pi Patel

I would like to be baptized.

Santosh Patel

You think that tiger is a friend? He is an animal, not a playmate!

Pi Patel

Animals have souls. I have seen it in their eyes.

Disregard Steps 1 through 3.

Writer

I didn't know Hindus said "Amen."

Adult Pi Patel

Catholic Hindus do.

Writer

Catholic Hindus?

Adult Pi Patel

We get to feel guilty before hundreds of gods, instead of just one.

Writer

But you're a Hindu first?

Adult Pi Patel

None of us knows God until someone introduces us. I was first introduced to God as a Hindu. There are 33 million gods in the Hindu religion. How can I not come to know a few of them? I met Krishna first.

Writer

I think, you've set the stage. So far we have an Indian boy named after a French swimming pool, on a Japanese ship full of animals, heading to Canada.

Adult Pi Patel

Yes. Now we have to send our boy into the middle of the Pacific, and uh…

Writer

And make me believe in God.

Adult Pi Patel

Yeah. We'll get there. It was four days out of Manila, above the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot on Earth. Our ship, the Tsimtsum, pushed on, bullishly indifferent to its surroundings. It moved with the slow, massive confidence of a continent.

Writer

It was a human tooth?

Adult Pi Patel

Don't you see? The island was carnivorous.

Writer

Carnivorous? Like a Venus Flytrap?

Adult Pi Patel

Yes. The whole island. The plants, the water in those pools, the very ground itself. During the day those pools held fresh water, but at night some chemical process turned the water in those pools into acid. Acid that dissolved those fish that sent the meerkats scurrying into the trees, and Richard Parker running to the boat.

Writer

But where did the tooth come from?

Adult Pi Patel

Years ago, some poor fellow just like me must have found himself stranded on that island, and like me he thought he might stay there forever. But all that the island gave him by day, it took away again by night. To think how many hours spent with only meerkats for company. How much loneliness taken on. All I know is that eventually he died and the island digested him, leaving behind only his teeth. I saw how my life would end if I stayed on that island. Alone and forgotten. I had to get back to the world, or die trying. I spent the next day preparing the boat. I filled my stores with fresh water, ate seaweed until my stomach could take no more, and brought as many meerkats as I could fit into the storage locker for Richard Parker. I couldn't leave without him, of course. It would mean killing him. And so I waited for his return. I knew he wouldn't be late. No one has seen that floating island since, and you won't read about those trees in any nature book. And yet, if I hadn't found those shores, I would have died. If I hadn't discovered that tooth, I would have been lost, alone forever. Even when God seemed to have abandoned me, He was watching. Even when He seemed indifferent to my suffering, He was watching. And when I was beyond all hope of saving, He gave me rest, then gave me a sign to continue my journey.

Writer

So, you're a Christian, and a Muslim.

Adult Pi Patel

And a Hindu of course.

Writer

And a Jew, I suppose?

Adult Pi Patel

Well, I do teach a course on Kabbalah at the university. And why not? Faith is a house with many rooms.

Writer

But no room for doubt?

Adult Pi Patel

Oh plenty, on every floor. Doubt is useful, it keeps faith a living thing. After all, you cannot know the strength of your faith until it has been tested.

A mouthful of water will not harm you, but panic will.