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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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More quotes by Yann Martel

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I am not a particularly natural writer. I am not a person who can write in paragraphs the way some writers do. For me, it's sentence by sentence, sometimes word-by-word. And I revise constantly. It's a very laborious process, but I love doing it.
Yann Martel
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I chose the name Pi because it's an irrational number (one with no discernable pattern). Yet scientists use this irrational number to come to a rational understanding of the universe. To me, religion is a bit like that, irrational yet with it we come together we come to a sound understanding of the universe.
Yann Martel
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Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat wearing Muslims.
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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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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But I want to pray to Allah. I want to be a Christian.
Yann Martel
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...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
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My alarm clock during my childhood was a pride of lions.
Yann Martel
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People always seek to compare. They can take the new, but only if it is somehow connected to the familiar. We need that in our lives, the mix of the new and the old. But of course I'm flattered about the comparison with Old man and the sea. Hemingway is a great writer.
Yann Martel
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How does one say in the jargon of musicology that my sould was pulled out of me and thrown up in the air, to be tossed about by the music. How does one say that I breathed, that I existed, in harmony with the ups and downs of those notes. What kind of notes both elevate and cast down, exalt and crush?
Yann Martel
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The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.
Yann Martel
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As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound.
Yann Martel
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Can there be any happiness greater than the happiness of salvation?
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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Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart.
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.
Yann Martel
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You bring joy and pain in equal measure. Joy because you are with me, but pain because it wont be for long.
Yann Martel
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science can only take you so far and then you have to leap
Yann Martel
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Words are much better at relating emotions and thoughts.
Yann Martel
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You may not believe in life, but I don't believe in death. Move on!
Yann Martel