You can't quantify human pain the way you can measure out sugar. Death comes one individual at a time.
Yann MartelRead
All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the inherent unpredictability and irrationality in all living beings, which is essential for survival and adaptation.
Yann Martel's quote suggests that all living organisms possess a degree of madness or irrational behavior that drives them to make unusual choices. This 'madness' is crucial for adaptation and survival, as it allows species to explore new avenues, innovate, and ultimately thrive in ever-changing environments. It reminds us that what may seem irrational can often be a vital part of life's complexity and resilience.
In practice
During a speech about innovation and creativity in business.
You can't quantify human pain the way you can measure out sugar. Death comes one individual at a time.
Come aboard if your destination is oblivion- it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat if you want. But it's a sad view.
Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths.
The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.
I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.
Art is a gift: you create and then you give away. How readers receive that gift is their business. If they hate it, that’s their response to it. Others respond by liking it. Either way, that is their interaction with the book, which is no longer mine.
Money is human happiness in the abstract.
Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party
America is the only country ever founded on the printed word.
Money is power, money is force, money will do good as harm. In the hands of good men and women it could accomplish, and it has accomplished, good.
And I say the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father.
I'm saying look, here they come, pay attention. Let your eyes transform what appears ordinary, commonplace, into what it is, a moment in time, an observed fragment of eternity.
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