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1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness–how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I’ve got!

Yann Martel

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TinyVastnessViews

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More Yann Martel Quotes

• 

  Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans.

  YANN MARTEL
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• 

  Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.

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• 

  To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures who people the tree of your life and give it new branches.

  YANN MARTEL
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• 

  The animals might embody certain traits. We think of tigers as being ferocious, etc. But to my mind, it was the other way around: the humans embodied certain animal traits.

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• 

  Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction.

  YANN MARTEL
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• 

  I have a fierce will to live. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others – and I am one of those – never give up. We fight and fight and fight.

  YANN MARTEL
  FightingGive UpLoss
• 

  I went about the job in a direct way. I took the hatchet in both my hands and vigorously beat the fish on the head with the hammerhead (I still didn’t have the stomach to use the sharp edge).

  YANN MARTEL
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• 

  There is no doubt in my mind that that feral giraffes and feral hippos have been living in Tokyo for generations without seeing a soul.

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• 

  I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.

  YANN MARTEL
  IllusionMonthsWeek
• 

  The world isn’t just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn’t that make life a story?

  YANN MARTEL
  LifeTravelUnderstanding
• 

  Religion is just an alternate way of reading reality – you read material reality, and then you add on an extra layer of religiosity that deepens that understanding of reality. Some countries have lost that capacity, or dismissed it or marginalized it.

  YANN MARTEL
  CountryReadingReality
• 

  It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go.

  YANN MARTEL
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• 

  The dorado did the most extraordinary thing as it died: it began to flash all kinds of colours in rapid succession. Blue, green, red, gold, and violet flickered and shimmered neon-like on its surface as it struggled. I felt I was beating a rainbow to death.

  YANN MARTEL
  BeganExtraordinaryKindsShimmeredSuccession
• 

  I explore it now in the only place left for it, my memory.

  YANN MARTEL
  LeftMemoriesPlace
• 

  Life is an interpretation of a series of facts, and that interpretation is really what life is about. So the division between non-fiction and fiction has a certain logic, but it’s a very limited one. And by and large, it isn’t helpful.

  YANN MARTEL
  DivisionFactsFictionHelpfulLarge
• 

  War subjects itself to transportation in a way that we find acceptable.

  YANN MARTEL
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