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If you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside down and shook it you would be amazed at the animals that fall out: badgers, wolves, boa constrictors, crocodiles, ostriches, baboons, capybaras, wild boars, leopards, manatees, ruminants, in untold numbers.

Yann Martel

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.
YANN MARTEL

Emotional Fiction Real
I explore it now in the only place left for it, my memory.
YANN MARTEL

Left Memories Place
For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out.
YANN MARTEL

Beens City Evil People
Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness–how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I’ve got!
YANN MARTEL

Tiny Vastness Views
I am not a particularly natural writer. I am not a person who can write in paragraphs the way some writers do. For me, it’s sentence by sentence, sometimes word-by-word. And I revise constantly. It’s a very laborious process, but I love doing it.
YANN MARTEL

Laborious Process Sometimes Way Writing
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.
YANN MARTEL

Giving Hard Heart Up Work
Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
YANN MARTEL

Defend Matter Small
Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field-but they’re all we have.
YANN MARTEL

Dancing Toads Trying
Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life.
YANN MARTEL

Life Lifeboat
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

Dream Hands Mistake
Can there be any happiness greater than the happiness of salvation?
YANN MARTEL

Greater Happiness Salvation
My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.
YANN MARTEL

Described Feelings Hardly
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.
YANN MARTEL

Brother Mother Sorry
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.
YANN MARTEL

Dream Hands Survival
Don’t you bully me with your politeness!
YANN MARTEL

Bully People Politeness
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.
YANN MARTEL

Brother Children Moving Presence

If you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside down and shook it you would be amazed at the animals that fall out: badgers, wolves, boa constrictors, crocodiles, ostriches, baboons, capybaras, wild boars, leopards, manatees, ruminants, in untold numbers.

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If you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside down and shook it you would be amazed at the animals that fall out: badgers, wolves, boa constrictors, crocodiles, ostriches, baboons, capybaras, wild boars, leopards, manatees, ruminants, in untold numbers.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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