To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It is like losing–I’m sorry, I would rather not go on.
YANN MARTELFiction 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.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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In art, something comes of nothing. Out of the thin air and the ether, you create a story. And that is intensely satisfying.
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Christianity is a religion in a rush.
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I find that movies tend to fix the aesthetics of a story in people’s minds.
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Music is a bird’s answer to the noise and heaviness of words. It puts the mind in a state of exhilarated speechlessness.
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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 am not a particularly natural writer. I am not a person who can write in paragraphs the way some writers do. For me, it’s sentence by sentence, sometimes word-by-word. And I revise constantly. It’s a very laborious process, but I love doing it.
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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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Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love.
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War subjects itself to transportation in a way that we find acceptable.
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I was giving up. I would have given up – if a voice hadn’t made itself heard in my heart. The voice said “I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare.
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If you don’t have dreams, how do you maneuver reality? Where do you get the ideas to change reality if not from dreams?
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I can’t live for more than four years outside of Canada. I’m Canadian, so ultimately that is my reference point.
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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.
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Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
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How long does it take for a broken spirit to kill a body that has food, water and shelter?
YANN MARTEL