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

Yann Martel

When you’ve suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.
YANN MARTEL

Pain Sad Unbearable
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.
YANN MARTEL

Happy Mannered Mind Possessed Spy
Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.
YANN MARTEL

Beats Reason Risk
How long does it take for a broken spirit to kill a body that has food, water and shelter?
YANN MARTEL

Broken Spirit Long Water
I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.
YANN MARTEL

Heart Nerves Pain
Art is a gift: you create and then you give away. How readers receive that gift is their business. If they hate it, that’s their response to it. Others respond by liking it. Either way, that is their interaction with the book, which is no longer mine.
YANN MARTEL

Art Book Hate InterAction
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.
YANN MARTEL

Allies Decision Over You
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

Country Reading Reality
We are all born like Catholics, aren’t we—in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?
YANN MARTEL

Born Catholic Introducing
We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.
YANN MARTEL

Animals Men Zoos
Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love – but sometimes it was so hard to love.
YANN MARTEL

Faith Go God Letting Opening Up
My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
YANN MARTEL

Gloomy Left Suffering
Once you’ve been struck by violence, you acquire companions that never leave you entirely: Suspicion, Fear, Anxiety, Despair, Joylessness. The natural smile is taken from you and the natural pleasures you once enjoyed lose their appeal.
YANN MARTEL

Entirely Leave Natural Once Pleasing
The three religions because I wanted to discuss faith, not organized religion, so wanted to relativize organized religion by having Pi practice three.
YANN MARTEL

Christian Practice Two
We don’t want any invention. We want the ‘straight facts,’ as you say in English.” Isn’t telling about something–using words, English or Japanese–already something of an invention? Isn’t just looking upon this world already something of an invention?
YANN MARTEL

Country Invention Language People Some Something
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.
YANN MARTEL

Animal Course Jail Tanzania Zoos

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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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