Yann Quotes

I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I have to turn miracle into routine. ~ Yann Martel

Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror. ~ Yann Martel

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

We loved our son like the sea loves an island, always surrounding him with our arms, always touching him and crashing upon his shore with our care and concern. When he was gone, the sea had only itself to contemplate. ~ Yann Martel

This book was born as I was hungry. Let m eexplain. ~ Yann Martel

May books spread the world over! ~ Yann Martel

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

Proves to be a devastating hunter. Hyenas attack ~ Yann Martel

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

The most beautiful rooms I have entered have been empty ones. Warehouses full of light and dust. Empty attics with a view. Coastlines. Prairies. ~ Yann Martel

My suffering left me sad and gloomy. ~ Yann Martel

A realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably. ~ Yann Martel

Ageing is not easy, Senhora Castro. It's a terrible, incurable pathology. And great love is another pathology. ~ Yann Martel

How strange, this habit of weeping. Do animals weep? Surely they feel sadness - but do they express it with tears? He doubts it. He has never heard of a weeping cat or dog, or of a weeping wild animal. It seems to be a uniquely human trait. He doesn't see what purpose it serves. He weeps hard, even violently, and at the end of it, what? Desolate tiredness. A handkerchief soaked in tears and mucus. Red eyes for everyone to notice. And weeping is undignified. It lies beyond the tutorials of etiquette and remains a personal idiom, individual in its expression. The twist of face, quantity of tears, quality of sob, pitch of voice, volume of clamour, effect on the complexion, the play of hands, the posture taken: One discovers weeping - one's weeping personality - only upon weeping. It is a strange discovery, not only to others but to oneself. Resolve ~ Yann Martel

In my experience, a castaway's worst mistake is to hope too much and to do too little. ~ Yann Martel

The sad fact is that there are no natural deaths, despite what doctors say. Every death is felt by someone as a murder, as the unjust taking of a loved being. ~ Yann Martel

Sitting in an office for TOO long is not natural, perhaps, so that's why we should change it. I didn't say that out-and-out capitalism, which reduces humanity to dollar figures, is natural. ~ 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

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

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

English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was the music from the streets. ~ Yann Martel

My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described. ~ Yann Martel

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

If it happened, it happened. Why should it have to mean anything? ~ Yann Martel

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

You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it. ~ Yann Martel

If a friend of mine in Paris had confessed that he was in love with a Simon or a Peter, I would have compared notes with him on my love for Mary Ann. Gender in matters of love struck me as of no greater consequence than flavours in ice-cream. I imagine the absence of religion in my upbringing was one factor that had allowed this belief to survive. Perhaps, too, I had a natural openness in the matter. At any rate, it was completely unwittingly that I had disregarded this fundamental polarity of North American society. ~ Yann Martel

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

The presence of God is the finest of rewards. ~ Yann Martel

Art is water, and just as humans are always close to water, for reasons of necessity (to drink, to wash, to flush away, to grow) as well as for reasons of pleasure (to play in, to swim in, to relax in front of, to sail upon, to suck on frozen, coloured and sweetened), so humans must always be close to art in all its incarnations, from the frivolous to the essential. Otherwise we dry up. ~ Yann Martel

Whereas before the road, the sea, the trees, the airm the sun all spoke differently to me, now they spoke one language od unity. Tree took account of road, which was aware of air, which was mindful of sea, which shares things with sun. Every element lived in harmonious relation with its neighbor, and all was with and kin. I knelt a mortal; I arose an immortal. I felt like that centre of a small circle coinciding with the centre of a much larger one. Batman met Allah, ~ Yann Martel

I am reminded of a story of Lord Krishna when he was a cowherd. Every night he invites the milkmaids to dance with him in the forest. They come and they dance. The night is dark, the fire in their midst roars and crackles, the beat of the music gets ever faster - the girls dance and dance and dance with their sweet lord, who has made himself so abundant as to be in the arms of each and every girl. But the moment the girls become possessive, the moment each one imagines that Krishna is her partner alone, he vanishes. So it is that we should not be jealous of God. ~ Yann Martel

I 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. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality. ~ Yann Martel

Or rather, since Christians are so fond of capital letters, a Story. ~ Yann Martel

Every opportunity you create for yourself and the people around you, every thought or idea you share with the world, every conversation you have is a seed planted. A seed planted in your head. In other people's heads. Everywhere. # ~ Yann Girard

Of the river of time, he worries neither about its spring nor its delta. ~ Yann Martel

It's not right that gentleness meet horror. ~ Yann Martel

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

I can only tell my story, what you believe is up to you. ~ Yann Martel

Much hostile and aggressive behaviour among animals is the expression of social insecurity. ~ 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

I tell you, to be drunk on alcohol is disgraceful, but to be drunk on water is noble and ecstatic. ~ Yann Martel

A germ of religious exaltation, no bigger than a mustard seed. ~ Yann Martel

Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory. ~ Yann Martel

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

He found it where he should have looked first, on the Internet, which is a net indeed, one that can be cast further than the eye can see and be retrieved no matter how heavy the hall, its magical mesh never breaking under the strain but always bringing in the most amazing catch. ~ Yann Martel

The reward for the watching eye and listening ear is great. ~ Yann Martel

Life goes on and you don't touch tigers. ~ Yann Martel

In a healthy individual, a broken bone that has healed properly is strongest where it was once broken. You have not lost any life, Henry told himself. You will still get your fair share of years. Yet the quality of his life changed. Once you've been struck by violence, you acquire companions that never leave you entirely: Suspicion, Fear, Anxiety, Despair, Joylessness. The natural smile is taken from you and the natural pleasures you once enjoyed lose their appeal. ~ Yann Martel

Cinema is visually powerful, it is a complete experience, reaches a different audience. It's something I really like. I like movies. ~ Yann Martel

Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? ~ Yann Martel

You may not believe in life, but I don't believe in death. Move on! ~ Yann Martel

..there's sunlight and shade, spots
and patterns of colour, your mind is elsewhere–so you don't make out what is right in front of you. ~ Yann Martel

They were dead; I could no longer deny it. What a thing to acknowledge in your heart! 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 to people the tree of your life and give it new branches. 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. ~ Yann Martel

Once you've been struck by violence, you acquire companions that never leave you entirely: Suspicion, Fear, Anxiety, Despair, Joylessness. ~ Yann Martel

Now he realized that this matter of faith was either radically to be taken seriously or radically not to be taken seriously. ~ Yann Martel

Art is rooted in joy. ~ Yann Martel

I am magical: I can bleed for five days and not die. ~ Yann Martel

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

My gratitude to him is as boundless as the Pacific ocean. ~ Yann Martel

Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind, my heart. ~ Yann Martel

But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste of death forever in his mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect?
Love. That was his answer. ~ Yann Martel

Loneliness comes up to him like a sniffing dog. It circles him insistently. He waves it away, but it refuses to leave him alone. ~ Yann Martel

It was frightening, the extent to which a full belly made for a good mood. ~ Yann Martel

There's nothing like the unimaginable to make people believe. ~ Yann Martel

A wandering corpse, a bundle of mindless functions, ~ Yann Martel

Readers will easily recognize the cover of a book they've read, but in a cafe that man over there, is that ... is that ... well, it's hard to tell - doesn't he have long hair? - oh, he's gone. ~ Yann Martel

That's the great, enduring challenge of our modern times, is it not, to marry faith and reason? So hard--so unreasonable--to root our lives upon a distant wisp of holiness. Faith is grand but impractical: How does one live an eternal idea in a daily way? It's so much easier to be reasonable. Reason is practical, its rewards are immediate, its workings are clear. But alas, reason is blind. Reason, on its own, leads us nowhere, especially in the face of adversity. How do we balance the two, how do we live with both faith and reason? ~ Yann Martel

But I called, as we came near, to one who stood beside the water's edge, asking him what men did in Astahahn and what their merchandise was, and with whom they traded. He said, "Here we have fettered and manacled Time, who would otherwise slay the gods." I asked him what gods they worshipped in that city, and he said, "All those gods whom Time has not yet slain." (from "Idle Days on the River Yann") ~ Lord Dunsany

It is the irony of this story that the one who scared me witless to start with was the very same who brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even wholeness. ~ Yann Martel

The three religions because I wanted to discuss faith, not organized religion, so wanted to relativize organized religion by having Pi practice three. I would have like PI to be a Jew, too, to practice Judaism, but there are two religions that are explicitly incompatible: Christianity and Judaism. Where one begins, the other ends, according to Christians, and where one endures, the other strays, according to Jews. ~ Yann Martel

What his uncle does not understand is that in walking backwards, his back to the world, his back to God, he is not grieving. He is objecting. Because when everything cherished by you in life has been taken away, what else is there to do but object? ~ Yann Martel

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

Stories full of metaphors are by writers who play the language like a mandolin for our entertainment, novelists, ~ Yann Martel

Despite attending a nominally Christian school, I had not yet been inside a church - and I wasn't about to dare the deed now. I knew very little about the religion. It had a reputation for few gods and great violence. But good schools. ~ Yann Martel

As for fame, fame felt like nothing. Fame was not a sensation like love or hunger or loneliness, welling from within and invisible to the outside eye. It was rather entirely external, coming from the minds of others. It existed in the way people looked at him or behaved towards him. In that, being famous was no different from being gay, or Jewish, or from a visible minority: you are who you are, and then people project onto you some notion they have. ~ Yann Martel

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

So, Swami Jesus, will you go on the hajj this year?" Ravi said, bringing the palms of his hands
together in front of his face in a reverent namaskar. "Does Mecca beckon?" He crossed himself. "Or
will it be to Rome for your coronation as the next Pope Pius?" He drew in the air a Greek letter,
making clear the spelling of his Mockery. "Have you found time yet to get the end of your pecker
cut off and become a Jew? At the rate you're going, if you go to temple on Thursday, mosque on
Friday, synagogue on Saturday and church on Sunday, you only need to convert to three more
religions to be on holiday for the rest of your life. ~ Yann Martel

Work, work, work, but what mark do we leave, what point do we make? People who are too beholden to work become like erasers: as things move forward, they leave in their wake no trace of themselves. ~ Yann Martel

Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. ~ Yann Martel

I quite deliberately dressed wild animals in tame costumes of my imagination. ~ 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

Memory is a glue: it attaches you to everything, even to what you don't like. ~ Yann Martel

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

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

I would return home to la maison, feminine where, as likely as not, I would go to my room, la chambre, where I would settle to read un livre masculine, until supper. During the masculine meal, feminine food would be eaten. After my hard, productive masculine day, I would rest during the feminine night. At one time, for a few days, I even took an affected aversion to being in the kitchen, la cuisine. ~ Yann Martel

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

Time became distance for me in the way it is for all mortals ~ Yann Martel

The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark. ~ Yann Martel

You might have noticed that I have been sending you used books. I have done this not to save money, but to make a point which is that a used book, unlike a used car, hasn't lost any of its initial value. A good story rolls of the lot into the hands of its new reader as smoothly as the day it was written. And there's another reason for these used paperbacks that never cost much even when new; I like the idea of holding a book that someone else has held, of eyes running over lines that have already seen the light of other eyes. That, in one image, is the community of readers, is the communion of literature. ~ Yann Martel

You see, the penis, it's so graceless, wouldn't you agree? When it's cold and shrivelled up, it looks like W.H. Auden in his old age; when it's hot, it flops and dangles about in a ridiculous way; when it's excited, it looks so pained and earnest you'd think it was going to burst into tears. And the scrotum! To think that something so vital to the survival of the species, fully responsible for 50 per cent of the ingredients--though none of the work--should hang freely from the body in a tiny, defenceless bag of skin. One whack, one bite, one paw-scratch--and it's just the right level, too, for your average animal, a dog, a lion, a sabre-tooth tiger--and that's it, end of story. Don't you think it should get better protection? Behind some bone, for example, like us? What could be better than our nicely tapered entrance? It's discreet and stylish, everything is cleverly and compactly encased in the body, with nothing hanging out within easy reach of a closing subway door, there's a neat triangle of hair above it, like a road sign, should you lose your way--it's perfect. The penis is just such a lousy design. It's pre-Scandinavian. Pre-Bauhaus, even. ~ 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

To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity. ~ Yann Martel

You may be astonished that in such a short period of time I could go from weeping over the muffled killing of a flying fish to gleefully bludgeoning to death a dorado. I could explain it by arguing that profiting from a pitiful flying fish's navigational mistake made me shy and sorrowful, while the excitement of actively capturing a great dorado made me sanguinary and self-assured. But in point of fact the explanation lies elsewhere. It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing. ~ Yann Martel

I was determined to move forward. ~ Yann Martel

Love is a house with an unshakable foundation and an indestructible roof. ~ Yann Martel

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

There is something very utopian about what I do. But utopia is nothing more than a truth that the world is not yet ready to hear. ~ Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Isn't it ironic, Richard Parker? We're in hell yet still we're afraid of immortality ~ Yann Martel