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.
YANN MARTELThe 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.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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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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I have a story that will make you believe in God.
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My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
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As much as I love movies, it would be presumptuous of me to think that I know how to make one.
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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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Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
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Music is a bird’s answer to the noise and heaviness of words. It puts the mind in a state of exhilarated speechlessness.
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Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed.
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I cannot think of a better way to spread the faith. No thundering from a pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book of scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little girl’s kiss on your cheek.
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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.
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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.
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It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go.
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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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All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.
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Just do it. Get it down on the page. Work hard. And then let go. Ask yourself why you want to write. You have to be clear about that.
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We always see the Holocaust in terms of black-and-white images, barking Germans, cowering Jews.
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You can get used to anything – haven’t I already said that? Isn’t that what all survivors say?
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I know zoos are no longer in people’s good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.
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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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It’s amazing how willpower can build walls.
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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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It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I’ve made none the champion.
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We were, literally and figuratively, in the same boat.
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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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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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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