We always see the Holocaust in terms of black-and-white images, barking Germans, cowering Jews.
YANN MARTELI 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.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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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 can well imagine an athiest’s last words: “White, white! L-L-Love! My God!” – and the deathbed leap of faith.
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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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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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I went about the job in a direct way. I took the hatchet in both my hands and vigorously beat the fish on the head with the hammerhead (I still didn’t have the stomach to use the sharp edge).
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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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The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving.
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First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first.
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It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.
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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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Christianity is a religion in a rush.
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The planet is populated by human beings, of which there are only two sexes, and the role of the writer is to explore otherness, other realities. So the idea of a man exploring what it’s like to be a woman doesn’t strike me as being that wild or crazy an idea.
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Any writer will be happy and good only if they know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.
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In that, being famous was no different from being gay, or Jewish, or from a visible minority: you are who you are, and then people project onto you some notion they have.
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Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat wearing Muslims.
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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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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 have read that there are two fears that cannot be trained out of us: the startle reaction upon hearing an unexpected noise, and vertigo.
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I would like to add a third, to wit, the rapid and direct approch of a known killer
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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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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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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?
YANN MARTEL -
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.
YANN MARTEL -
Life 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.
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We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.
YANN MARTEL -
A movie will do in one second, with one image, what it will take a novelist at least a page to describe.
YANN MARTEL