I find that movies tend to fix the aesthetics of a story in people’s minds.
YANN MARTELI thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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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.
YANN MARTEL -
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.
YANN MARTEL -
A movie will do in one second, with one image, what it will take a novelist at least a page to describe.
YANN MARTEL -
I can well imagine an athiest’s last words: “White, white! L-L-Love! My God!” – and the deathbed leap of faith.
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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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The world isn’t just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn’t that make life a story?
YANN MARTEL -
Don’t you bully me with your politeness!
YANN MARTEL -
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.
YANN MARTEL -
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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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.
YANN MARTEL -
We don’t want any invention. We want the ‘straight facts,’ as you say in English.” Isn’t telling about something–using words, English or Japanese–already something of an invention? Isn’t just looking upon this world already something of an invention?
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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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Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you Richard Parker!
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Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness–how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I’ve got!
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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