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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.

Yann Martel

Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love.
YANN MARTEL

Beautiful Beauty Dirty
To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It is like losing–I’m sorry, I would rather not go on.
YANN MARTEL

Father Guidance Lose Supports
As much as I love movies, it would be presumptuous of me to think that I know how to make one.
YANN MARTEL

Movie Love Thinking
I know zoos are no longer in people’s good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.
YANN MARTEL

Grace People Zoos
When you’ve suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.
YANN MARTEL

Pain Sad Unbearable
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).
YANN MARTEL

Blue Hands Jobs Stomach Vigorously
Come aboard if your destination is oblivion- it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat if you want. But it’s a sad view.
YANN MARTEL

Together Views Want
Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart.
YANN MARTEL

Dream Goodbye Heart
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
At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far.
YANN MARTEL

Moments Thinking Wonder
Once you’ve been struck by violence, you acquire companions that never leave you entirely: Suspicion, Fear, Anxiety, Despair, Joylessness. The natural smile is taken from you and the natural pleasures you once enjoyed lose their appeal.
YANN MARTEL

Entirely Leave Natural Once Pleasing
Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.
YANN MARTEL

Beats Reason Risk
My greatest wish – other than salvation – was to have a book.
YANN MARTEL

Book Salvation Wish
You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.
YANN MARTEL

Cheer Graduation Inspiring
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.
YANN MARTEL

Atheist Brother Legs
Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
YANN MARTEL

Defend Matter Small

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 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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Popular Authors

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