He’s a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.
YANN MARTELArtists invent things as a way of telling the truth.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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Any writer will be happy and good only if they know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.
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I have a story that will make you believe in God.
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Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.
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As much as I love movies, it would be presumptuous of me to think that I know how to make one.
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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.
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Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one’s life away.
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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.
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We were, literally and figuratively, in the same boat.
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Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field-but they’re all we have.
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Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.
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One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy.
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And in between the two, in between the sky and the sea, were all the winds. And there were all the nights and all the moons. To be a castaway is to be a point perpetually at the centre of a circle.
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It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I’ve made none the champion.
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I am reminded of a story of Lord Krishna when he was a cowherd. Every night he invites the milkmaids to dance with him in the forest. They come and they dance. The night is dark, the fire in their midst roars and crackles, the beat of the music gets ever faster.
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I spent more hours than I can count a quiet witness to the highly mannered, manifold expressions of life that grace our planet. It is something so bright, loud, weird and delicate as to stupefy the senses.
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It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.
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Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body. It is from there that both babies and cancers are born.
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A zoo is not an ideal place for an animal – of course the best place for a chimp is the wilds of Tanzania – but a good zoo is a decent, acceptable place.
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It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go.
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My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
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The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.
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India is a place where all stories are possible. You forget that the imagination can take hold of anything and contemplate it and love it and describe it.
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I have read that there are two fears that cannot be trained out of us: the startle reaction upon hearing an unexpected noise, and vertigo.
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Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.
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The three religions because I wanted to discuss faith, not organized religion, so wanted to relativize organized religion by having Pi practice three.
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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