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That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?

Yann Martel

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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Transforming
Essence
Fiction
Bring
Reality
Twisting
Selective

More quotes by Yann Martel

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Don’t worry about being good…. Aspire to be authentic.
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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.
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If literature does one thing, it makes you more empathetic by making you live other lives and feel the pain of others. Ideologues don't feel the pain of others because they haven't imaginatively got under their skins.
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At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far.
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I meet a number of people as a writer of fiction who say Oh, I don't read much fiction, as if the history of the United States, just as an example, isn't an exercise in storytelling and myth-making.
Yann Martel
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How long does it take for a broken spirit to kill a body that has food, water and shelter?
Yann Martel
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It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion.
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You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better.
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.
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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.
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Most of us get our history through story.
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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My greatest wish - other than salvation - was to have a book.
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Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed.
Yann Martel
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The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.
Yann Martel
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Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they've known for a great unknown beyond the horizon? ... The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life.
Yann Martel
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Art is the suitcase of history, carrying the essentials. Art is the life buoy of history. Art is seed, art is memory, art is vaccine.
Yann Martel
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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.
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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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Fanatics do not have faith - they have belief. With faith you let go. You trust. Whereas with belief you cling.
Yann Martel