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
Teacher
Head
Came
Women
Lit
Good
Match
Men
Teachers
Luck
Youth

More quotes by Yann Martel

Image
To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity.
Yann Martel
Image
Music is a bird's answer to the noise and heaviness of words. It puts the mind in a state of exhilarated speechlessness.
Yann Martel
Image
Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body. It is from there that both babies and cancers are born.
Yann Martel
Image
science can only take you so far and then you have to leap
Yann Martel
Image
Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away.
Yann Martel
Image
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
Image
To me, the research is a way of exploring what it means to be alive.
Yann Martel
Image
If you don't let technology help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaurhood.
Yann Martel
Image
Any writer will be happy and good only if they know what they're doing and why they're doing it.
Yann Martel
Image
You bring joy and pain in equal measure. Joy because you are with me, but pain because it wont be for long.
Yann Martel
Image
Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction.
Yann Martel
Image
Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.
Yann Martel
Image
How long does it take for a broken spirit to kill a body that has food, water and shelter?
Yann Martel
Image
I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful.
Yann Martel
Image
Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.
Yann Martel
Image
Christianity is a religion in a rush.
Yann Martel
Image
I chose the name Pi because it's an irrational number (one with no discernable pattern). Yet scientists use this irrational number to come to a rational understanding of the universe. To me, religion is a bit like that, irrational yet with it we come together we come to a sound understanding of the universe.
Yann Martel
Image
My next book - each one while I'm working on it - dances in my mind and thrills me at every turn. If it didn't, why would I write it?
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
I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point or a lion merely turning its head. But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it.
Yann Martel