…for everything has a trace of the divine in it.
YANN MARTEL…for everything has a trace of the divine in it.
YANN MARTELI 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 MARTELMy 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 MARTELAll 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.
YANN MARTELCan there be any happiness greater than the happiness of salvation?
YANN MARTELLife on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life.
YANN MARTELThe blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving.
YANN MARTELThe 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 MARTELTo lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures who people the tree of your life and give it new branches.
YANN MARTELThe 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 MARTELLife 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 MARTELThe idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.
YANN MARTELWe are all born like Catholics, aren’t we—in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?
YANN MARTELFor evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out.
YANN MARTELYou may not believe in life, but I don’t believe in death. Move on!
YANN MARTELThere 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