Answer:
she learns that someone broke into his garage but took nothing.
Explanation:
Simply just to tell them to stop or force them off it
They are the author's memories and impressions with the man he based Life of Pi off of. If you read the introduction(which is all in italics) he talks about how he came to write the book, and one thing the author mentions is the first meeting of real-life Piscine. So while the story is going on, the author adds in his thoughts on the main character.
The colon is a punctuation mark consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line.