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Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.

Yann Martel

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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Stories
Music
Life
Colour
Noise
Painting
Story
Sense
Makes

More quotes by 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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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
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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
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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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I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.
Yann Martel
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Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away.
Yann Martel
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There's no peace like the peace of an inner courtyard on a sunny day.
Yann Martel
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You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.
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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Afterwards, when it's all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?
Yann Martel
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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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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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Just do it. Get it down on the page. Work hard. And then let go. Ask yourself why you want to write. You have to be clear about that.
Yann Martel
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Christianity is a religion in a rush.
Yann Martel
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I can't live for more than four years outside of Canada. I'm Canadian, so ultimately that is my reference point.
Yann Martel
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Don’t worry about being good…. Aspire to be authentic.
Yann Martel
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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
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But I want to pray to Allah. I want to be a Christian.
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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Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths.
Yann Martel