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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.

Yann Martel

You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.
YANN MARTEL

Cheer Graduation Inspiring
In a movie, you need good actors, whereas in a book, you don’t, unless you have a really bad imagination. In a book, your imagination will do the acting for you. Also, the process of revelation is often different. Tension is achieved in a different way.
YANN MARTEL

Acting Book Imagination
As much as I love movies, it would be presumptuous of me to think that I know how to make one.
YANN MARTEL

Movie Love Thinking
Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life.
YANN MARTEL

Life Lifeboat
He’s a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.
YANN MARTEL

Men Shy Taught
I know zoos are no longer in people’s good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.
YANN MARTEL

Grace People Zoos
It was as unbelievable as the moon catching fire.
YANN MARTEL

Catching Fire Moon
I would like to add a third, to wit, the rapid and direct approch of a known killer
YANN MARTEL

Approach Killer Known
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
It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go.
YANN MARTEL

Book Go Important Letting Life Of Pi
I ask you, is it the fig tree’s fault that it’s not the season for figs? What kind of thing is that to do to an innocent tree, wither it instantly?
YANN MARTEL

Faults Kind Tree
I chose the name Pi because it’s an irrational number (one with no discernable pattern). Yet scientists use this irrational number to come to a “rational” understanding of the universe. To me, religion is a bit like that, “irrational” yet with it we come together we come to a sound understanding of the universe.
YANN MARTEL

Irrational Names Numbers Understanding
How long does it take for a broken spirit to kill a body that has food, water and shelter?
YANN MARTEL

Broken Spirit Long Water
In art, something comes of nothing. Out of the thin air and the ether, you create a story. And that is intensely satisfying.
YANN MARTEL

Air Art Stories
Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
YANN MARTEL

Defend Matter Small
I had to stop hoping so much that a ship would rescue me. I should not count on outside help. Survival had to start with me.
YANN MARTEL

Dream Hands Mistake
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
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
I wept like a child. It was not because I was overcome at having survived my ordeal, though I was. Nor was it the presence of my brothers and sisters, though that too was very moving.
YANN MARTEL

Brother Children Moving Presence
I explore it now in the only place left for it, my memory.
YANN MARTEL

Left Memories Place
Just as art brings you to another place, so does religion – and to ask questions of factuality tends to reduce both. If you say you were inspired by a novel, that implies that your book is a work of fiction.
YANN MARTEL

Art Book Inspired
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 MARTEL

Beautiful Garden Thinking
In a healthy individual, a broken bone that has healed properly is strongest where it was once broken. You have not lost any life, Henry told himself. You will still get your fair share of years. Yet the quality of his life changed.
YANN MARTEL

Broken Properly Taken Years
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
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.
YANN MARTEL

Illusion Months Week
Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it’s true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths.
YANN MARTEL

Emotional Fiction Real
I wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain. I was sixteen years old, a harmless boy, bookish and religious, and now I had blood on my hands. It’s a terrible burden to carry. All sentient life is sacred.
YANN MARTEL

Blood Boys Religious

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Yann Martel Quotes