Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field-but they’re all we have.
YANN MARTELWe were, literally and figuratively, in the same boat.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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I have a fierce will to live. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others – and I am one of those – never give up. We fight and fight and fight.
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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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We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.
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The dorado did the most extraordinary thing as it died: it began to flash all kinds of colours in rapid succession. Blue, green, red, gold, and violet flickered and shimmered neon-like on its surface as it struggled. I felt I was beating a rainbow to death.
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He’s a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.
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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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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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You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.
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The three religions because I wanted to discuss faith, not organized religion, so wanted to relativize organized religion by having Pi practice three.
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We always see the Holocaust in terms of black-and-white images, barking Germans, cowering Jews.
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Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life.
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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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science can only take you so far and then you have to leap
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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.
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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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Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love.
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My greatest wish – other than salvation – was to have a book.
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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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Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.
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The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.
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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.
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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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You may not believe in life, but I don’t believe in death. Move on!
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It’s hard to visualize James Bond without seeing one of the actors who played him. And it’s hard to visualize Harry Potter without seeing Daniel Radcliffe. A movie is so visually powerful, so overwhelming, that it tends to crowd out how you might have imagined things.
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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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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