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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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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Even
Brutal
Killing
Simple
Used
Anything
Persons
Person

More quotes by Yann Martel

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First wonder goes deepest wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first.
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Christianity stretches back through the ages, but in essence it exists only at one time: right now.
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As much as I love movies, it would be presumptuous of me to think that I know how to make one.
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Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.
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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.
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Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.
Yann Martel
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I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye.
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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?
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My greatest wish — other than salvation — was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time.
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To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity.
Yann Martel
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I spent more hours than I can count a quiet witness to the highly mannered, manifold expressions of life that grace our planet. It is something so bright, loud, weird and delicate as to stupefy the senses.
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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Sometimes I got my majors mixed up. A number of my fellow religious-studies students - muddled agnostics who didn't know which way was up, who were in the thrall of reason, that fool's gold for the bright - reminded me of the three-toed sloth and the three-toed sloth, such a beautiful example of the miracle of life, reminded me of God.
Yann Martel
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In a movie, you need good actors, whereas in a book, you don't, unless you have a really bad imagination. In a book, your imagination will do the acting for you. Also, the process of revelation is often different. Tension is achieved in a different way.
Yann Martel
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I explore it now in the only place left for it, my memory.
Yann Martel
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If there's only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it?
Yann Martel
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It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.
Yann Martel
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Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food is low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured.
Yann Martel
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The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table. That which sustains the universe beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression, is the same thing. The finite within the infinite, the infinite within the finite.
Yann Martel
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Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited.
Yann Martel