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It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I’ve made none the champion.

Yann Martel

A zoo is not an ideal place for an animal – of course the best place for a chimp is the wilds of Tanzania – but a good zoo is a decent, acceptable place.
YANN MARTEL

Animal Course Jail Tanzania Zoos
The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.
YANN MARTEL

Boredom Opposites Swings
To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures who people the tree of your life and give it new branches.
YANN MARTEL

Brother Mother Sorry
A movie will do in one second, with one image, what it will take a novelist at least a page to describe.
YANN MARTEL

Communication Novelists Pages
I spent more hours than I can count a quiet witness to the highly mannered, manifold expressions of life that grace our planet. It is something so bright, loud, weird and delicate as to stupefy the senses.
YANN MARTEL

Earth Expression Grace
The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.
YANN MARTEL

Book Fiction Ideas
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.
YANN MARTEL

Different Minority Notion Project
I would like to add a third, to wit, the rapid and direct approch of a known killer
YANN MARTEL

Approach Killer Known
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
That’s what fiction is about, isn’t it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?
YANN MARTEL

Essence Fiction Reality
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 thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.
YANN MARTEL

Air Doubt Grateful
Art is a gift: you create and then you give away. How readers receive that gift is their business. If they hate it, that’s their response to it. Others respond by liking it. Either way, that is their interaction with the book, which is no longer mine.
YANN MARTEL

Art Book Hate InterAction
We always see the Holocaust in terms of black-and-white images, barking Germans, cowering Jews.
YANN MARTEL

Couple Real War
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
If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn’t love hard to believe?
YANN MARTEL

Belief Believe Book Life

It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I’ve made none the champion.

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It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I’ve made none the champion.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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