A movie will do in one second, with one image, what it will take a novelist at least a page to describe.
YANN MARTELA realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher.
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I have read that there are two fears that cannot be trained out of us: the startle reaction upon hearing an unexpected noise, and vertigo.
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There is no doubt in my mind that that feral giraffes and feral hippos have been living in Tokyo for generations without seeing a soul.
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Mockery be damned, my urine looked delicious.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you’ve defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.
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The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.
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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?
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I would like to add a third, to wit, the rapid and direct approch of a known killer
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You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.
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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 might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better.
YANN MARTEL