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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

Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.
YANN MARTEL

Civilization Territory Zoos
The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity – it’s envy.
YANN MARTEL

Envy Reason Sticks
When you’ve suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.
YANN MARTEL

Pain Sad Unbearable
A zoo is not an ideal place for an animal – of course the best place for a chimp is the wilds of Tanzania – but a good zoo is a decent, acceptable place.
YANN MARTEL

Animal Course Jail Tanzania Zoos
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 have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he’s not careful.
YANN MARTEL

Careful Men Ties
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
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
Any writer will be happy and good only if they know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.
YANN MARTEL

Doing Good Happy Knows
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

Astonishing Frightening Indignation
The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.
YANN MARTEL

Dark Moon Stars
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

Illusion Months Week
I have a story that will make you believe in God.
YANN MARTEL

Believe God Stories
In a healthy individual, a broken bone that has healed properly is strongest where it was once broken. You have not lost any life, Henry told himself. You will still get your fair share of years. Yet the quality of his life changed.
YANN MARTEL

Broken Properly Taken Years
Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction.
YANN MARTEL

Fiction Mean Play Reality
Religion is just an alternate way of reading reality – you read material reality, and then you add on an extra layer of religiosity that deepens that understanding of reality. Some countries have lost that capacity, or dismissed it or marginalized it.
YANN MARTEL

Country Reading Reality

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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