There 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 MARTELIt’s amazing how willpower can build walls.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
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First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first.
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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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The language of prose is very different than the language of cinema, so the movie has to successfully translate what was in the book.
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Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human 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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My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
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In art, something comes of nothing. Out of the thin air and the ether, you create a story. And that is intensely satisfying.
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Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness–how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I’ve got!
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It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.
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To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It is like losing–I’m sorry, I would rather not go on.
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My greatest wish – other than salvation – was to have a book.
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I have read that there are two fears that cannot be trained out of us: the startle reaction upon hearing an unexpected noise, and vertigo.
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I would have like PI to be a Jew, too, to practice Judaism, but there are two religions that are explicitly incompatible: Christianity and Judaism. Where one begins, the other ends, according to Christians, and where one endures, the other strays, according to Jews.
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Christianity is a religion in a rush.
YANN MARTEL