How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
I can well imagine an atheist's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!" – and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story. (1.22.1)
Faith and storytelling – or rather listening to stories – mix constantly in this novel. Pi ridicules the agnostic for suspending belief and thus missing the more riveting interpretation of death. Though it's worth wondering what role the true story plays in all this. Even if it is a more boring story.
Quote #5
My greatest wish – other than salvation – was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time. Alas, there was no scripture in the lifeboat. [...]. At the very least, if I had had a good novel! But there was only the survival manual, which I must have read a thousand times over the course of my ordeal. (2.73.1-2)
Great books continue on indefinitely – not because the reader never runs out of pages – because we can read them "again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time" (2.73.1). It's a starling version of infinity. Much like Pi's name: 3.14159265...which, as an irrational number, never settles after the decimal point.
Quote #6
That was my last entry. I went on from there, endured, but without noting it. Do you see these invisible spirals on the margins of the page? I thought I would run out of paper. It was the pens that ran out. (2.89.4)
Through Pi's diary, Martel comments on writing. Some of the most important stuff in a novel or poem is what the author leaves unsaid. Pi provides us with a startling image of his unspoken despair: invisible spirals in the margin of the page.