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.
YANN MARTELThe planet is populated by human beings, of which there are only two sexes, and the role of the writer is to explore otherness, other realities. So the idea of a man exploring what it’s like to be a woman doesn’t strike me as being that wild or crazy an idea.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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The presence of God is the finest of rewards.
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Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love – but sometimes it was so hard to love.
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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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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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My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.
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…for everything has a trace of the divine in it.
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Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
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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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How long does it take for a broken spirit to kill a body that has food, water and shelter?
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Don’t you bully me with your politeness!
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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.
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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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Art is a gift: you create and then you give away. How readers receive that gift is their business. If they hate it, that’s their response to it. Others respond by liking it. Either way, that is their interaction with the book, which is no longer mine.
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There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God… These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside.
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Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart.
YANN MARTEL