I felt I was beating a rainbow to death
YANN MARTELLife 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.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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…for everything has a trace of the divine in it.
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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 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.
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I had to stop hoping so much that a ship would rescue me. I should not count on outside help. Survival had to start with me.
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I know zoos are no longer in people’s good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.
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I find that movies tend to fix the aesthetics of a story in people’s minds.
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We are all born like Catholics, aren’t we—in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?
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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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It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go.
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Can there be any happiness greater than the happiness of salvation?
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Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind, my heart.
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It’s amazing how willpower can build walls.
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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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Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.
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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.
YANN MARTEL






