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A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real.

Yann Martel

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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
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True
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More quotes by Yann Martel

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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.
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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Much hostile and aggressive behaviour among animals is the expression of social insecurity.
Yann Martel
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First wonder goes deepest wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first.
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.
Yann Martel
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Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you Richard Parker!
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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Religion is just an alternate way of reading reality - you read material reality, and then you add on an extra layer of religiosity that deepens that understanding of reality. Some countries have lost that capacity, or dismissed it or marginalized it.
Yann Martel
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I go to mass every Sunday, but love going to mosques too. Muslims pray in a beautiful way.
Yann Martel
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Christianity stretches back through the ages, but in essence it exists only at one time: right now.
Yann Martel
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Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.
Yann Martel
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No one dies of nausea, but it can seriously sap the will to live.
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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Books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play baseball or soccer, and mine was the gangly, unathletic kid that no one wanted on their team.
Yann Martel
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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
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In art, something comes of nothing. Out of the thin air and the ether, you create a story. And that is intensely satisfying.
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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Why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch?
Yann Martel
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I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape.
Yann Martel
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The language of prose is very different than the language of cinema, so the movie has to successfully translate what was in the book.
Yann Martel