I’m not a consumer. I hate buying clothes. I don’t have a mobile. I just don’t need things. I don’t like things.
YANN MARTELOnce you’ve been struck by violence, you acquire companions that never leave you entirely: Suspicion, Fear, Anxiety, Despair, Joylessness. The natural smile is taken from you and the natural pleasures you once enjoyed lose their appeal.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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I go to mass every Sunday, but love going to mosques too. Muslims pray in a beautiful way.
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You bring joy and pain in equal measure. Joy because you are with me, but pain because it wont be for long.
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Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited.
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When you’ve suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.
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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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It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go.
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At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far.
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War subjects itself to transportation in a way that we find acceptable.
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I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.
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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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Christianity is a religion in a rush. Look at the world created in seven says. Even on a symbolic lovel, that’s creation in frenzy.
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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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In that, being famous was no different from being gay, or Jewish, or from a visible minority: you are who you are, and then people project onto you some notion they have.
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The presence of God is the finest of rewards.
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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