black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

You may not believe in life, but I don’t believe in death. Move on!
YANN MARTEL

Believe May Moving
If you stumble about believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?
YANN MARTEL

Believe Life Love
The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity – it’s envy.
YANN MARTEL

Envy Reason Sticks
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?
YANN MARTEL

Country Invention Language People Some Something
Music is a bird’s answer to the noise and heaviness of words. It puts the mind in a state of exhilarated speechlessness.
YANN MARTEL

Answers Bird Mind
Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.
YANN MARTEL

Company Madness Misery
Don’t you bully me with your politeness!
YANN MARTEL

Bully People Politeness
Once 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.
YANN MARTEL

Entirely Leave Natural Once Pleasing
Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher.
YANN MARTEL

Element Games Simple
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.
YANN MARTEL

Christianity Looks World
All 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 MARTEL

Inspirational Moving Saving
A realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably.
YANN MARTEL

Inspirational Life Principles
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

Dark Moon Stars
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.
YANN MARTEL

Faith Go God Letting Opening Up
It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.
YANN MARTEL

Book Life Names Sometimes
People always seek to compare. They can take the new, but only if it is somehow connected to the familiar.
YANN MARTEL

Connected Men People Sea

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Yann Martel Quotes