We always see the Holocaust in terms of black-and-white images, barking Germans, cowering Jews.
YANN MARTELIt is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one’s life away.
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Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
YANN MARTEL -
Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them — and then they leap.
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Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited.
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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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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 felt I was beating a rainbow to death
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The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.
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You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better.
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I ask you, is it the fig tree’s fault that it’s not the season for figs? What kind of thing is that to do to an innocent tree, wither it instantly?
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A zoo is not an ideal place for an animal – of course the best place for a chimp is the wilds of Tanzania – but a good zoo is a decent, acceptable place.
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If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.
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My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
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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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My gratitude to him is as boundless as the Pacific ocean.
YANN MARTEL