Yann Martel quotes - page 5

The moral of a fable is eternal. The moral of a story is temporary to a story. (Yann Martel)

Already then something was lost forever, a basic trust.

Yann Martel

To my mind, faith is like being in the sun. When you are in the sun, can you avoid creating a shadow?

Yann Martel

Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous possessive love that grabs at what it can.

Yann Martel

All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways.

Yann Martel

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity; it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can.

Yann Martel

I was weeping because Richard Parker left me so unceremoniously.

Yann Martel

Colonialism is a terrible bane for a people upon whom it is imposed, but a blessing for a language.

Yann Martel

I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.

Yann Martel

Things didn't turn out the way they were supposed to, but what can you do? You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.

Yann Martel

know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. (Yann Martel)

Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time." Page 212.

Yann Martel

I love Canada. It's a wonderful political act of faith that exists atop a breathtakingly beautiful land.

Yann Martel

Every book I've written has been a different attempt to understand something, and the success or failure of the previous one is irrelevant. I write the book I want.

Yann Martel

A great literary work can be completely, completely unpredictable. Which can sometimes make them very hard to read, but it gives them a great originality.

Yann Martel

I can't live for more than four years outside of Canada. I'm Canadian, so ultimately that is my reference point.

Yann Martel

How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer, but art is very self-referential, whereas religion claims to go beyond the bounds of human existence.

Yann Martel

Any writer will be happy and good only if they know what they're doing and why they're doing it.

Yann Martel

Books are something social - a writer speaking to a reader - so I think making the reading of a book the center of a social event, the meeting of a book club, is a brilliant idea.

Yann Martel

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

I find that movies tend to fix the aesthetics of a story in people's minds. (Yann Martel)

Music moves me - duh - and that is like having a window opening on a heightened reality, but the effect is fleeting: When the music ends, the magic, the uplifting, vanishes and the window slams shut. Words, on the other hand, by the nature of how they work, emotions evoked by dint of carefully laid out thoughts, have a more lingering effect.

Yann Martel

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

Yann Martel

Words are much better at relating emotions and thoughts.

Yann Martel

Most of us get our history through story.

Yann Martel

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Yann Martel

Yann Martel - Image

Photo: Shane Lin from Seattle, WA, USA, aka 'About Malenkov in Exile' on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.5

Occupation: Canadian Author
Born: June 25, 1963
Quotes count: 135
Wikipedia: Yann Martel

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