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I have a fierce will to live. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others – and I am one of those – never give up. We fight and fight and fight.

Yann Martel

When you’ve suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.
YANN MARTEL

Pain Sad Unbearable
How true is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.
YANN MARTEL

Invention Mother True Very
We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.
YANN MARTEL

Animals Men Zoos
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.
YANN MARTEL

Dream Goodbye Heart
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!
YANN MARTEL

Tiny Vastness Views
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?
YANN MARTEL

Life Travel Understanding
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
There is no doubt in my mind that that feral giraffes and feral hippos have been living in Tokyo for generations without seeing a soul.
YANN MARTEL

Generations Seeing Shock Soul
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
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.
YANN MARTEL

Add Hearing Two Unexpected
Artists invent things as a way of telling the truth.
YANN MARTEL

Artist Telling Truth Way
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
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
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
Much hostile and aggressive behaviour among animals is the expression of social insecurity.
YANN MARTEL

Animal Expression Insecurity
The dorado did the most extraordinary thing as it died: it began to flash all kinds of colours in rapid succession. Blue, green, red, gold, and violet flickered and shimmered neon-like on its surface as it struggled. I felt I was beating a rainbow to death.
YANN MARTEL

Began Extraordinary Kinds Shimmered Succession

I have a fierce will to live. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others – and I am one of those – never give up. We fight and fight and fight.

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I have a fierce will to live. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others – and I am one of those – never give up. We fight and fight and fight.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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