Quote

Books, like people, can't be reduced to the cost of the materials with which they were made. Books, like people, become unique and precious once you get to know them.

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
Books
Become
Book
Made
Reduced
Like
Precious
People
Materials
Unique
Cost

More quotes by Yann Martel

Image
When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.
Yann Martel
Image
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
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 think art comes from some sense of discomfort with the world, some sense of not quite fitting with it.
Yann Martel
Image
My zoology thesis was a functional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. I chose the sloth because its demeanour - calm, quiet and introspective - did something to soothe my shattered self.
Yann Martel
Image
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
Image
...if you fall into a lion's pit, the reason the lion will tear you to pieces is not because it's hungry-be assured, zoo animals are amply fed-or because it's bloodthirsty, but because you've invaded it's territory.
Yann Martel
Image
There is nothing more satisfying than having a sentence fall into place in a way you feel is right, and then adding another one and then another one. It's extraordinarily satisfying.
Yann Martel
Image
Don’t you bully me with your politeness!
Yann Martel
Image
It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.
Yann Martel
Image
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.
Yann Martel
Image
There's nothing like the unimaginable to make people believe.
Yann Martel
Image
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
Image
I turned around, stepped over the Zebra and threw myself overboard.
Yann Martel
Image
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
Image
For the first time I noticed - as I would notice repeatedly during my ordeal, between one throe of agony and the next - that my suffering was taking place in a grand setting. I saw my suffering for what it was, finite and insignificant, and I was still. My suffering did not fit anywhere, I realized. And I could accept this. It was all right.
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
It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse.
Yann Martel
Image
He's a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.
Yann Martel
Image
Truth is a nebulous thing. There are certain, definite truths, but the truth of our lives goes far beyond facts.
Yann Martel