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 MARTELI can well imagine an athiest’s last words: “White, white! L-L-Love! My God!” – and the deathbed leap of faith.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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War subjects itself to transportation in a way that we find acceptable.
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The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.
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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?
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I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.
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There are animals we haven’t stopped by. Don’t think they’re harmless. Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
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Come aboard if your destination is oblivion- it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat if you want. But it’s a sad view.
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I went about the job in a direct way. I took the hatchet in both my hands and vigorously beat the fish on the head with the hammerhead (I still didn’t have the stomach to use the sharp edge).
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Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.
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Artists invent things as a way of telling the truth.
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Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction.
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Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.
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We are all born like Catholics, aren’t we—in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?
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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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Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you Richard Parker!
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Sitting in an office for TOO long is not natural, perhaps, so that’s why we should change it. I didn’t say that out-and-out capitalism, which reduces humanity to dollar figures, is natural.
YANN MARTEL