Quote

Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.

Yann Martel

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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Importance
Cloud
Losing
Jealous
Death
Passings
Possessive
Beautiful
Leap
Grabs
Two
Fallen
Leaps
Thing
Passing
Lightly
Love
Clouds
Gloom
Life
Shadow
Oblivion

More quotes by Yann Martel

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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
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I can only tell my story, what you believe is up to you.
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My ears were full. Nothing more, not one more sound, could push into them and be registered.
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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.
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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.
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Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
Yann Martel
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How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer, but art is very self-referential, whereas religion claims to go beyond the bounds of human existence.
Yann Martel
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Was it the forgetfulness of old age or personal incapacity that made the man able to say please but not thank you?
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Blessed be shock. Blessed be the part of us that protects us from too much pain and sorrow. At the heart of life is a fusebox.
Yann Martel
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High calls low and low calls high. I tell you, if you were in such dire straits as I was, you too would elevate your thoughts. The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar.
Yann Martel
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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. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.
Yann Martel
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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
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Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field-but they're all we have.
Yann Martel
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Religion is just an alternate way of reading reality - you read material reality, and then you add on an extra layer of religiosity that deepens that understanding of reality. Some countries have lost that capacity, or dismissed it or marginalized it.
Yann Martel
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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
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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
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Religion? Mr Kumar grinned broadly. I don't believe in religion. Religion is darkness.
Yann Martel
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As much as I love movies, it would be presumptuous of me to think that I know how to make one.
Yann Martel
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There are animals we haven't stopped by. Don't think they're harmless. Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
Yann Martel
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The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table. That which sustains the universe beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression, is the same thing. The finite within the infinite, the infinite within the finite.
Yann Martel