black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

The language of prose is very different than the language of cinema, so the movie has to successfully translate what was in the book.

Yann Martel

Mockery be damned, my urine looked delicious.
YANN MARTEL

Delicious Mockery.Urine
Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.
YANN MARTEL

Company Madness Misery
If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.
YANN MARTEL

Fiction Genre Writing
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 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
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
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.
YANN MARTEL

Together Views Want
My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.
YANN MARTEL

Described Feelings Hardly
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
There are animals we haven’t stopped by. Don’t think they’re harmless. Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
YANN MARTEL

Animal Matter Thinking
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
Religion is just an alternate way of reading reality – you read material reality, and then you add on an extra layer of religiosity that deepens that understanding of reality. Some countries have lost that capacity, or dismissed it or marginalized it.
YANN MARTEL

Country Reading Reality
I explore it now in the only place left for it, my memory.
YANN MARTEL

Left Memories Place
The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.
YANN MARTEL

Book Fiction Ideas
How true is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.
YANN MARTEL

Invention Mother True Very
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

The language of prose is very different than the language of cinema, so the movie has to successfully translate what was in the book.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The language of prose is very different than the language of cinema, so the movie has to successfully translate what was in the book.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Yann Martel Quotes