QuoteProject
Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body. It is from there that both babies and cancers are born.
Yann Martel
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Life and death are intertwined and both manifest through the physical body.

This quote by Yann Martel explores the profound connection between life and death, emphasizing that both phenomena exist within the same physical space, the body. It suggests that the body serves as the origin of both life, symbolized by babies, and death, represented by illnesses like cancer, underlining the cyclical nature of existence and the duality present in human experience.

Themes

LifeDeathBodyExistenceDuality

In practice

Example use cases

During a philosophical discussion about the nature of existence.

More from Yann Martel

You can't quantify human pain the way you can measure out sugar. Death comes one individual at a time.
Yann MartelRead
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.
Yann MartelRead
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.
Yann MartelRead
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.
Yann MartelRead
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.
Yann MartelRead
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.
Yann MartelRead

Similar quotes

It is ironic to think that man might determine his own future by something so seemingly trivial as the choice of an insect spray.
Rachel CarsonRead
No evil can happen to a good man either in life or after death.
PlatoRead
Confine yourself to the present.
Marcus AureliusRead
Generally, we admire the thing we are not.
Stephen FryRead
Queerness isn't just Lady Gaga and overpriced drinks and fauxhawks. It's James Baldwin and Bea Arthur and Gertrude Stein and Gore Vidal.
John Cameron MitchellRead
That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
Paul ValeryRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.