He’s a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.
YANN MARTELDare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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Christianity is a religion in a rush. Look at the world created in seven says. Even on a symbolic lovel, that’s creation in frenzy.
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Just do it. Get it down on the page. Work hard. And then let go. Ask yourself why you want to write. You have to be clear about that.
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I cannot think of a better way to spread the faith. No thundering from a pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book of scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little girl’s kiss on your cheek.
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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?
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Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life.
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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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Sitting in an office for TOO long is not natural, perhaps, so that’s why we should change it. I didn’t say that out-and-out capitalism, which reduces humanity to dollar figures, is natural.
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My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
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That’s what fiction is about, isn’t it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?
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For fear, real fear such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it.
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We were, literally and figuratively, in the same boat.
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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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Even when God seemed to have abandoned me, he was watching. Even when he seemed indifferent to my suffering, he was watching. And when I was beyond all hope of saving, he gave me rest. Then he gave me a sign to continue my journey.
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Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you’ve defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.
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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