If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.
YANN MARTELThe animals might embody certain traits. We think of tigers as being ferocious, etc. But to my mind, it was the other way around: the humans embodied certain animal traits.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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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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It’s amazing how willpower can build walls.
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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.
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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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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.
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I wept like a child. It was not because I was overcome at having survived my ordeal, though I was. Nor was it the presence of my brothers and sisters, though that too was very moving.
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I go to mass every Sunday, but love going to mosques too. Muslims pray in a beautiful way.
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I am reminded of a story of Lord Krishna when he was a cowherd. Every night he invites the milkmaids to dance with him in the forest. They come and they dance. The night is dark, the fire in their midst roars and crackles, the beat of the music gets ever faster.
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We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.
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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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Christianity is a religion in a rush.
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If you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside down and shook it you would be amazed at the animals that fall out: badgers, wolves, boa constrictors, crocodiles, ostriches, baboons, capybaras, wild boars, leopards, manatees, ruminants, in untold numbers.
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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.
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Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you Richard Parker!
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You can get used to anything – haven’t I already said that? Isn’t that what all survivors say?
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To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures who people the tree of your life and give it new branches.
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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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I have a story that will make you believe in God.
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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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Mockery be damned, my urine looked delicious.
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Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind, my heart.
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Don’t you bully me with your politeness!
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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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War subjects itself to transportation in a way that we find acceptable.
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For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out.
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Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.
YANN MARTEL