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 MARTELWe always see the Holocaust in terms of black-and-white images, barking Germans, cowering Jews.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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A realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably.
YANN MARTEL -
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 wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain. I was sixteen years old, a harmless boy, bookish and religious, and now I had blood on my hands. It’s a terrible burden to carry. All sentient life is sacred.
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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.
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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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The language of prose is very different than the language of cinema, so the movie has to successfully translate what was in the book.
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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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Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life.
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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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War subjects itself to transportation in a way that we find acceptable.
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It’s amazing how willpower can build walls.
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All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.
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How true is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.
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In a movie, you need good actors, whereas in a book, you don’t, unless you have a really bad imagination. In a book, your imagination will do the acting for you. Also, the process of revelation is often different. Tension is achieved in a different way.
YANN MARTEL -
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