Quote

In my youth, it was my good luck to have a few good teachers, men and women, who came into my head and lit a match.

Yann Martel

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Women
Lit
Good
Match
Men
Teachers
Luck
Youth
Teacher
Head
Came

More quotes by Yann Martel

Image
I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape.
Yann Martel
Image
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.
Yann Martel
Image
Most of us get our history through story.
Yann Martel
Image
Life is an interpretation of a series of facts, and that interpretation is really what life is about. So the division between non-fiction and fiction has a certain logic, but it's a very limited one. And by and large, it isn't helpful.
Yann Martel
Image
These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.
Yann Martel
Image
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
Image
I couldn't get Him out of my head. Still can't. I spent three solid days thinking about Him. The more He bothered me, the less I coul forget Him. And the more I learned about Him, the less I wanted to leave Him.
Yann Martel
Image
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
Image
Books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play baseball or soccer, and mine was the gangly, unathletic kid that no one wanted on their team.
Yann Martel
Image
Was it the forgetfulness of old age or personal incapacity that made the man able to say please but not thank you?
Yann Martel
Image
I preferred to set off and perish in search of my own kind than to live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and spiritual death on this murderous island.
Yann Martel
Image
A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real.
Yann Martel
Image
People always seek to compare. They can take the new, but only if it is somehow connected to the familiar. We need that in our lives, the mix of the new and the old. But of course I'm flattered about the comparison with Old man and the sea. Hemingway is a great writer.
Yann Martel
Image
I wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain. I was sixteen years old, a harmless boy, bookish and religious, and now I had blood on my hands. It's a terrible burden to carry. All sentient life is sacred.
Yann Martel
Image
Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
Yann Martel
Image
Don’t you bully me with your politeness!
Yann Martel
Image
I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.
Yann Martel
Image
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
Image
Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love.
Yann Martel
Image
Afterwards, when it's all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?
Yann Martel