Top 100 Yann Martel Quotes
#1. I am magical: I can bleed for five days and not die.
Yann Martel
#2. One discovers weeping - one's weeping personality - only upon weeping. It is a strange discovery, not only to others but to oneself
Yann Martel
#3. I'm just trying to help"
"Do your uncle's bonsai eat meat?"
"I don't think so"
"Have you ever been bitten by one of his bonsai?"
"No."
"In that case, your uncle's bonsai are not helping us
Yann Martel
#4. 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.
Yann Martel
#5. I thought I would run out of paper. It was the pens that ran out.
Yann Martel
#6. Bapu Gandhi said, 'All religions are true.' I just want to love God.
Yann Martel
#7. My agency was pure and miraculous. It conferred power upon me. (pg. 223)
Yann Martel
#8. India is a place where all stories are possible. You forget that the imagination can take hold of anything and contemplate it and love it and describe it.
Yann Martel
#9. communion with God in the middle of bags of flour
Yann Martel
#10. I am careful never to talk about religion. Who am I to kick at people's crutches?
Yann Martel
#11. My developing sense was that the foundation of a story is an emotional foundation. If a story does not work emotionally, it does not work at all.
Yann Martel
#12. When animals fight, it is with the intent to kill and with the understanding that they may be killed.
Yann Martel
#14. 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?
Yann Martel
#15. Just do it. Get it down on the page. Work hard. And then let go. Ask yourself why you want to write. You have to be clear about that.
Yann Martel
#16. Stories full of metaphors are by writers who play the language like a mandolin for our entertainment, novelists,
Yann Martel
#17. The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.
Yann Martel
#18. As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound.
Yann Martel
#20. On occasion we say to ourselves, panting, 'Gosh, life is racing by.' But that's not it at all, it's the contrary: life is still. It is we who are racing by.
Yann Martel
#21. Afterwards, when it's all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?
Yann Martel
#22. Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat wearing Muslims.
Yann Martel
#23. You can't quantify human pain the way you can measure out sugar. Death comes one individual at a time.
Yann Martel
#24. I was alone and orphaned, in the middle of the Pacific, hanging on to an oar, an adult tiger in front of me, sharks beneath me, a storm raging about me.
Yann Martel
#25. I have a story that will make you believe in God.
Yann Martel
#26. It's not right that gentleness meet horror.
Yann Martel
#27. If a film project were available and the timing was right, I might be interested.
Yann Martel
#28. If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?
Yann Martel
#29. There's no boot."
No boot?"
No."
That makes me sad."
I ate it."
You ate the boot?"
Yes."
Was it good?"
No. Were the cigarettes good?"
No. I couldn't finish them."
I couldn't finish the boot.
Yann Martel
#30. If you don't have dreams, how do you maneuver reality? Where do you get the ideas to change reality if not from dreams?
Yann Martel
#31. A plain is what a mountain aims to be: the closest you can come to being in outer space while yet having your feet on this planet.
Yann Martel
#32. You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.
Yann Martel
#33. I'm looking at a dead event and trying to give it new life. In a sense, I'm a taxidermist.
Yann Martel
#34. I began to wait. My thoughts swung wildly. I was either fixed on practical details of immediate survival or transfixed by pain, weeping silently, my mouth open and my hands on my head.
Yann Martel
#35. We must do the same with death in our lives: resolve it, give it meaning, put it into context, however hard that might be.
Yann Martel
#36. A very long sentence, anchored in solid nouns, with countless subordinate clauses, scores of adjectives and adverbs, and bold conjunctions that launched the sentence in a new direction
besides unexpected interludes
has finally, with a surprisingly quiet full stop, come to an end.
Yann Martel
#37. I felt like I was beating a rainbow to death.
Yann Martel
#38. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on.
Yann Martel
#39. I sang that tree's glory, its solid, unhurried purity, its slow beauty. Oh, that I could be like it, rooted to the ground but with my every hand raised up to God in praise!
Yann Martel
#40. Yes! Practice-singular!' the wise men screamed in unison. Three index fingers, like punctuation marks, jumped to attention in the air to emphasize their point (Life of Pi 68).
Yann Martel
#41. It was frightening, the extent to which a full belly made for a good mood.
Yann Martel
#42. the senile, lecherous expression of a camel.
Yann Martel
#43. What of God's silence? I think it over. I add:
An intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presence and of ultimate purpose.
Yann Martel
#44. 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
#45. Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they've known for a great unknown beyond the horizon? ... The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life.
Yann Martel
#46. It is a vast country, so that inspires you. It's also the greatest hotel on earth: It welcomes people from everywhere. It's a good country to write from because in many ways Canada is the world.
Yann Martel
#47. Music is a bird's answer to the noise and heaviness of words. It puts the mind in a state of exhilerated speechlessness.
Yann Martel
#49. When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.
Yann Martel
#50. My alarm clock during my childhood was a pride of lions.
Yann Martel
#51. 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.
Yann Martel
#52. There's nothing like the unimaginable to make people believe.
Yann Martel
#53. The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists.
Yann Martel
#54. 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
#55. Plan Number Three: Attack Him with All Available Weaponry. Ludicrous. I wasn't Tarzan. I was a puny, feeble, vegetarian life form.
Yann Martel
#56. Now comes the difficult part: you must provoke the animal that is afflicting you. Tiger, rhinoceros, ostrich, wild boar, brown bear- no matter the beast, you must get its goat.
Yann Martel
#57. My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition. I mock this skull.
Yann Martel
#58. When the course of experience made me see that there is no saviour and no special grace, no remission beyond the human, that pain is to be endured and fades, if it fades, only with time, then God became nothing to me but a dyslexic dog, with neither bark nor bite.
Yann Martel
#59. To me, the research is a way of exploring what it means to be alive.
Yann Martel
#60. Even when God seemed to have abandoned me, he was watching. Even when he seemed indifferent to my suffering, he was watching. And when I was beyond all hope of saving, he gave me rest. Then he gave me a sign to continue my journey.
Yann Martel
#62. He was a man whose profession it was to love, and he would offer comfort and guidance to the best of his ability. I
Yann Martel
#63. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer ... then surely we are also permitted doubt.
Yann Martel
#64. If there is a change, it is usually for the lesser rather than the greater; many people seem to lose God along life's way.
Yann Martel
#66. I meet a number of people as a writer of fiction who say "Oh, I don't read much fiction," as if the history of the United States, just as an example, isn't an exercise in storytelling and myth-making.
Yann Martel
#67. All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.
Yann Martel
#68. Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind, my heart.
Yann Martel
#69. I don't know then. I wrote my book on the Holocaust without worrying about where the fucking bar code would go.
Yann Martel
#70. If you take two steps towards God,' he used to tell me, 'God runs to you!
Yann Martel
#71. Things floated in the water but none that brought me hope. I could see no other lifeboats.
Yann Martel
#72. My gratitude to him is as boundless as the Pacific ocean.
Yann Martel
#73. We believe what we see.
So did Columbus. What do you do when you're in the dark?
Yann Martel
#74. If you are pitched into misery, remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left.
Yann Martel
#75. When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.
Yann Martel
#77. Don't you bully me with your politeness!
Yann Martel
#78. 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
#79. Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love - but sometimes it was so hard to love.
Yann Martel
#80. He's a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.
Yann Martel
#81. That's the nature of grief: It's a creature with many arms but few legs, and it staggers about, searching for support.
Yann Martel
#82. 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
#83. 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.
Yann Martel
#84. A zoo is a cultural institution. Like a public library, like a museum, it is at the service of popular education and science. And by that token, not much of a money-making venture for the Greater Good and the Greater Profit are not compatible aims.
Yann Martel
#85. Truth is a nebulous thing. There are certain, definite truths, but the truth of our lives goes far beyond facts.
Yann Martel
#86. Whatever the reason for wanting to escape, sane or insane, zoo detractors should realize that animals don't escape to somewhere but from something.
Yann Martel
#88. Can there be any happiness greater than the happiness of salvation?
Yann Martel
#89. Under the pathologist's microscope, life and death fight in an illuminated circle in a sort of cellular bullfight. The pathologist's job is to find the bull among the matador cells
Yann Martel
#91. Cinema is visually powerful, it is a complete experience, reaches a different audience. It's something I really like. I like movies.
Yann Martel
#92. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time. Page 212.
Yann Martel
#93. I go to mass every Sunday, but love going to mosques too. Muslims pray in a beautiful way.
Yann Martel
#94. Those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly we are not the same afterwards.
Yann Martel
#95. It was as unbelievable as the moon catching fire.
Yann Martel
#96. 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.
Yann Martel
#97. 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.
Yann Martel
#98. If you become sick yourself, don't waste your vomit by sending it overboard. Vomit makes an excellent border guard. Puke on the edges of your territory.
Yann Martel
#99. 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
#100. Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love.
Yann Martel
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