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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

You can get used to anything – haven’t I already said that? Isn’t that what all survivors say?
YANN MARTEL

Said Survivor Used
Christianity is a religion in a rush.
YANN MARTEL

Christianity Religion Rush
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.
YANN MARTEL

Division Facts Fiction Helpful Large
If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn’t love hard to believe?
YANN MARTEL

Belief Believe Book Life
Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.
YANN MARTEL

Beautiful Jealous Life
My greatest wish – other than salvation – was to have a book.
YANN MARTEL

Book Salvation Wish
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
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
The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.
YANN MARTEL

Book Fiction Ideas
That’s what fiction is about, isn’t it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?
YANN MARTEL

Essence Fiction Reality
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
We are all born like Catholics, aren’t we—in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?
YANN MARTEL

Born Catholic Introducing
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.
YANN MARTEL

Christians Incompatible Practice Religions
You may not believe in life, but I don’t believe in death. Move on!
YANN MARTEL

Believe May Moving
science can only take you so far and then you have to leap
YANN MARTEL

Far Leap Science
You bring joy and pain in equal measure. Joy because you are with me, but pain because it wont be for long.
YANN MARTEL

Joy Long Measure Pain

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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