Quote

Stories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.

Yann Martel

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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Humans
Animal
Whole
Existence
Stitch
Story
Disparate
Family
Stitches
Individual
Coherent
Stories
Animals
Together
National
Human
Elements

More quotes by Yann Martel

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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
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My gratitude to him is as boundless as the Pacific ocean.
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I have a story that will make you believe in God.
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My ears were full. Nothing more, not one more sound, could push into them and be registered.
Yann Martel
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I'm not a consumer. I hate buying clothes. I don't have a mobile. I just don't need things. I don't like things.
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You may not believe in life, but I don't believe in death. Move on!
Yann Martel
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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
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My alarm clock during my childhood was a pride of lions.
Yann Martel
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Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness--how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I've got!
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To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity.
Yann Martel
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Can there be any happiness greater than the happiness of salvation?
Yann Martel
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science can only take you so far and then you have to leap
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I think art comes from some sense of discomfort with the world, some sense of not quite fitting with it.
Yann Martel
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When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.
Yann Martel
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It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.
Yann Martel
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[The taxidermist is] a historian, dealing with an animal's past the zookeeper is a politician, dealing with an animal's present and everyone else is a citizen who must decide on that animal's future (...) The indifference of the many, combined with the active hatred of the few, has sealed the fate of animals.
Yann Martel
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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.
Yann Martel
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Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans.
Yann Martel
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I preferred to set off and perish in search of my own kind than to live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and spiritual death on this murderous island.
Yann Martel
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Don’t worry about being good…. Aspire to be authentic.
Yann Martel