Life of Pi (2012)

Rafe Spall: Writer

Photos 

Quotes 

• Adult Pi Patel : 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 is tested.

• 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 : [smiles]  It's an amazing story.

• 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 : If it happened, it happened. Why should it have to mean anything?

• Writer : [reading off the report]  Mr. Patel's is an astounding story, courage and endurance unparalleled in the history of ship-wrecks. Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long, and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger.

• Writer : So your story does have a happy ending.

  Adult Pi Patel : Well, that's up to you. The story's yours now.

• 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.

• [first lines] 

  Writer : So, you were raised in a zoo?

  Adult Pi Patel : Born and raised. In Pondicherry, in what was the French part of India. My father owned the zoo, and I was delivered on short notice by a herpetologist, who was there to check on the Bengal monitor lizard. Mother and I were both healthy, but the poor lizard escaped and was trampled by a frightened cassowary. The way of karma, huh? The way of God.

• 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 : [laughs]  He would say that about a nice meal.

• Writer : Have I forgotten anything?

  Adult Pi Patel : I think you 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 : Now we have to send our little boy to the middle of the Pacific.

  Writer : And make me believe in God.

  Adult Pi Patel : Yes, we will get there.

• Pi Patel : 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 : [pause]  So, a story without things you've never seen before.

  Older Insurance Investigator : That's right.

  Pi Patel : Without surprises, without animals, or islands?

  Older Insurance Investigator : Yes, the truth.

  Writer : [back to present, to Adult Pi Patel]  So, what did you do?

  Adult Pi Patel : I told them another story.