black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.

Yann Martel

I would have like PI to be a Jew, too, to practice Judaism, but there are two religions that are explicitly incompatible: Christianity and Judaism. Where one begins, the other ends, according to Christians, and where one endures, the other strays, according to Jews.
YANN MARTEL

Christians Incompatible Practice Religions
Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love.
YANN MARTEL

Beautiful Beauty Dirty
Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited.
YANN MARTEL

Dramatic Special Unlimited
Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.
YANN MARTEL

Company Madness Misery
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.
YANN MARTEL

Air Doubt Grateful
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

Illusion Months Week
I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point or a lion merely turning its head. But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it.
YANN MARTEL

Language Perfection Sea Water
People always seek to compare. They can take the new, but only if it is somehow connected to the familiar.
YANN MARTEL

Connected Men People Sea
My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.
YANN MARTEL

Described Feelings Hardly
Afterwards, when it’s all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?
YANN MARTEL

Afrerwards God Over
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

Fiction Mean Play Reality
I had to stop hoping so much that a ship would rescue me. I should not count on outside help. Survival had to start with me.
YANN MARTEL

Dream Hands Mistake
Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher.
YANN MARTEL

Element Games Simple
I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he’s not careful.
YANN MARTEL

Careful Men Ties
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.
YANN MARTEL

Champion Made Night
The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving.
YANN MARTEL

Heart Light Shining

If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Yann Martel Quotes