Quote

I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.

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
Certain
Illusions
Problem
Plague
Good
Illusion
People
Longer
Grace
Faces
Freedom
Graces
Religion
Zoos

More quotes by Yann Martel

Image
I think art comes from some sense of discomfort with the world, some sense of not quite fitting with it.
Yann Martel
Image
The paths to liberation are numerous, but the bank along the way is always the same, the Bank of Karma, where the liberation account of each of us is credited or debited depending on our actions.
Yann Martel
Image
As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound.
Yann Martel
Image
How does one say in the jargon of musicology that my sould was pulled out of me and thrown up in the air, to be tossed about by the music. How does one say that I breathed, that I existed, in harmony with the ups and downs of those notes. What kind of notes both elevate and cast down, exalt and crush?
Yann Martel
Image
Most people take who they are, naturally, as a given, and they're interested in the sexual other, but not in being the sexual other. Most men are interested in women - whether sexually or not is not the question - but they don't necessarily want to be a woman.
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
The presence of God is the finest of rewards.
Yann Martel
Image
Artists invent things as a way of telling the truth.
Yann Martel
Image
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
Image
We think we live in a global village. We don't. The world is a big and beautiful and incredibly varied place. It can only be known locally, with your two feet on the ground. We should stick to our own gardens, as Voltaire said.
Yann Martel
Image
It was a huge zoo, spread over numberless acres, big enough to require a train to explore it, though it seemed to get smaler as I grew older, train included. Now it's so small it fits in my head.
Yann Martel
Image
The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar. It was natural that, bereft and desperate as I was, in the throes of unremitting suffering. I should turn to God
Yann Martel
Image
Mockery be damned, my urine looked delicious.
Yann Martel
Image
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. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up.
Yann Martel
Image
What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell.
Yann Martel
Image
Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.
Yann Martel
Image
My greatest wish - other than salvation - was to have a book.
Yann Martel
Image
science can only take you so far and then you have to leap
Yann Martel
Image
Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when they are not preoccupied with science.
Yann Martel
Image
If there's only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it?
Yann Martel