My gratitude to him is as boundless as the Pacific ocean.
YANN MARTELCome 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.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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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 -
It’s amazing how willpower can build walls.
YANN MARTEL -
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.
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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.
YANN MARTEL -
If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.
YANN MARTEL -
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 -
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 -
My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
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There is nothing more satisfying than having a sentence fall into place in a way you feel is right, and then adding another one and then another one. It’s extraordinarily satisfying.
YANN MARTEL -
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 -
You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.
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He’s a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.
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We think we live in a global village. We don’t. The world is a big and beautiful and incredibly varied place. It can only be known locally, with your two feet on the ground. We should stick to our own gardens, as Voltaire said.
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I go to mass every Sunday, but love going to mosques too. Muslims pray in a beautiful way.
YANN MARTEL -
I have a fierce will to live. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others – and I am one of those – never give up. We fight and fight and fight.
YANN MARTEL






