In art, something comes of nothing. Out of the thin air and the ether, you create a story. And that is intensely satisfying.
YANN MARTELNature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited.
More Yann Martel Quotes
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Mockery be damned, my urine looked delicious.
YANN MARTEL -
I am not a particularly natural writer. I am not a person who can write in paragraphs the way some writers do. For me, it’s sentence by sentence, sometimes word-by-word. And I revise constantly. It’s a very laborious process, but I love doing it.
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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.
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It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go.
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Afterwards, when it’s all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?
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My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.
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That’s what fiction is about, isn’t it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?
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A movie will do in one second, with one image, what it will take a novelist at least a page to describe.
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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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Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited.
YANN MARTEL -
You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.
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The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving.
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Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one’s life away.
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Stories–individual stories, family stories, national stories–are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.
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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.
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How long does it take for a broken spirit to kill a body that has food, water and shelter?
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Christianity is a religion in a rush. Look at the world created in seven says. Even on a symbolic lovel, that’s creation in frenzy.
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At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far.
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Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.
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I’m not a consumer. I hate buying clothes. I don’t have a mobile. I just don’t need things. I don’t like things.
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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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Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans.
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As much as I love movies, it would be presumptuous of me to think that I know how to make one.
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I ask you, is it the fig tree’s fault that it’s not the season for figs? What kind of thing is that to do to an innocent tree, wither it instantly?
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The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity – it’s envy.
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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.
YANN MARTEL