Just as art brings you to another place, so does religion – and to ask questions of factuality tends to reduce both. If you say you were inspired by a novel, that implies that your book is a work of fiction.
YANN MARTELMusic is a bird’s answer to the noise and heaviness of words. It puts the mind in a state of exhilarated speechlessness.
More Yann Martel Quotes
-
-
Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.
YANN MARTEL -
Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.
YANN MARTEL -
We are all born like Catholics, aren’t we—in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?
YANN MARTEL -
It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse.
YANN MARTEL -
My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
YANN MARTEL -
Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life.
YANN MARTEL -
Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind, my heart.
YANN MARTEL -
You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.
YANN MARTEL -
My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.
YANN MARTEL -
As much as I love movies, it would be presumptuous of me to think that I know how to make one.
YANN MARTEL -
My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.
YANN MARTEL -
I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.
YANN MARTEL -
Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body. It is from there that both babies and cancers are born.
YANN MARTEL -
When you’ve suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.
YANN MARTEL -
I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.
YANN MARTEL