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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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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Selfish
Hunger
Survival
Terrible
Sense
Life
Blunted
Threatened
Empathy

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I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.
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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.
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It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion.
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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.
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Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body. It is from there that both babies and cancers are born.
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Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher.
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science can only take you so far and then you have to leap
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I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.
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It's amazing how willpower can build walls.
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Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love.
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We are all born like Catholics, aren't we—in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?
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It is a vast country, so that inspires you. It's also the greatest hotel on earth: It welcomes people from everywhere. It's a good country to write from because in many ways Canada is the world.
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Books, like people, can't be reduced to the cost of the materials with which they were made. Books, like people, become unique and precious once you get to know them.
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I have a story that will make you believe in God.
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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.
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At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far.
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I go to mass every Sunday, but love going to mosques too. Muslims pray in a beautiful way.
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I cannot think of a better way to spread the faith. No thundering from a pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book of scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little girl's kiss on your cheek.
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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.
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My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.
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