Yann Martell Quotes

When people pose the question, are you "coxom", Tom Conrad? I like to pose a question back at them: Is J.K. Rowling actually a witch? Is Thomas Harris the no. 1 serial killer in the the US, did Yann Martell really spend a lifetime eating pie?
Of course, as far as I know J.K. Rowling is not a witch, but instead is a rather lovely and talented writer. As for that Thomas Harris (equally talented), I very much suspect he isn't actually a serial killer at all, or if he is, he's involved in the biggest case of double bluff ... ever! As for Yann Martell, well, as everyone with half a brain knows his book is actually concerned with a mathematical constant, so ignore the dumb pie joke. Hm :/ ~ Tom Conrad

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

Ageing is not easy, Sennhora Castro. It's a terrible, incurable pathology. And great love is another pathology. It starts well. It's a most desirable disease. One wouldn't want to do without it. It's like yeast that corrupts the juice of grapes. One loves, one loves, one persists in loving-the incubation period can be very long- and then, with death, comes the heart break. Love must always meet its unwanted end. ~ Yann Martel

For example
I wonder
could you tell my jumbled story in exactly one hundred chapters, not one more, not one less? I'll tell you, that's one thing I hate about my nickname, the way that number runs on forever. It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. ~ Yann Martel

Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love. ~ Yann Martel

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

To have success in your professional life is not so hard. To succeed as a man is more difficult. ~ Yann Arthus-Bertrand

I was as surprised as a flower that sees for the first time a bee coming towards it ~ Yann Martel

Oncoming death is terrible enough, but worse still is oncoming death with time to spare, time in which all the happiness that was yours and all the happiness that might have been yours becomes clear to you. You see with utter lucidity all that you are losing. ~ Yann Martel

...I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape. [...] It is important in life to conclude things properly. Only then you can let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse..."
~Life of Pi, chapter 94 ~ Yann Martel

Because of the gnawing feeling that no matter how hard they work their efforts will yield nothing, that what they build up in one year will be torn down in one day by others. ~ Yann Martel

While Odo has mastered the simple human trick of making porridge, Peter has learned the difficult animal skill of doing nothing. He's learned to unshackle himself from the race of time and contemplate time itself. As far as he can tell, that's what Odo spends most of his time doing: being in time, like one sits by a river, watching the water go by. It's a lesson hard learned, just to sit there and be. ~ Yann Martel

But I want to pray to Allah. I want to be a Christian. ~ Yann Martel

A story is a wedding in which we listeners are the groom watching the bride coming up the aisle. It is together, in an act of imaginary consummation, that the story is born. This act wholly involves us, as any marriage would, and just as no marriage is exactly the same as another, so each of us interprets a story differently, feels for it differently. A story calls upon us ... as individuals-and we like that. Stories benefit the human mind. ~ Yann Martel

Progress is unstoppable. It is a drumbeat to which we must all march. Technology helps and good ideas spread – these are two lows of nature. If you don't let technology help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaurhood! I am utterly convinced of this. ~ Yann Martel

'Life of Pi' was actually a very simple novel to write. ~ Yann Martel

The holy word is story, and story is the holy word. ~ Yann Martel

The animals might embody certain traits. We think of tigers as being ferocious, etc. But to my mind, it was the other way around: the humans embodied certain animal traits. ~ Yann Martel

Ser Arys was pleasant company abed, but wit and he were strangers. (Arianne Martell) ~ George R R Martin

As much as I love movies, it would be presumptuous of me to think that I know how to make one. ~ Yann Martel

I always take hundreds and hundreds of pictures. I used to work for 'National Geographic,' and they gave us a lot of film. ~ Yann Arthus-Bertrand

I turned around, stepped over the Zebra and threw myself overboard. ~ 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

The moon distresses you by silently reminding you of your solitude; you open your eyes wide to escape your loneliness. ~ Yann Martel

We always see the Holocaust in terms of black-and-white images, barking Germans, cowering Jews. We know very well-known fixed places like Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka, and Beltzec. Instead, war can live in a couple having a spat, when we say, "That was a real war." We very rarely have the Holocaust live in the terms of today. And I think that's a problem, because it becomes ancient history. ~ Yann Martel

We believe what we see.' ... What do you do when you're in the dark? ~ Yann Martel

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

If you went to a home, kicked down the front door, chased the people who lived there out into the street and said, "Go! You are free! Free as a bird! Go! Go!"
do you think they would shout and dance for joy? They wouldn't. Birds are not free. The people you've just evicted would sputter, "With what right do you throw us out? This is our home. We own it. We have lived here for years. We're calling the police, you scoundrel. ~ Yann Martel

We are all born like Catholics, aren't we - in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God? ~ Yann Martel

What works in a story is very different than what works in cinema. For example, dialogue in books: If you translate it too faithfully, it sounds a little stilted, because we often don't speak the way we speak in novels. Oral language is much punchier, shorter sentences. ~ Yann Martel

The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. A good-natured smile is forever on its lips ... I have seen that smile with my own eyes. I am not one given to projecting human traits and emotions onto animals, but many a time during that month in Brazil, looking up at a sloth in repose, I felt I was in the presence of upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer, wise beings whose intense imaginative lives were beyond the reach of scientific probing. ~ Yann Martel

Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. ~ Yann Martel

When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling. ~ Yann Martel