Quote

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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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Boredom
Opposites
Terror
Pendulums
Worst
Pendulum
Sometimes
Swing
Life
Swings
Pair
Pairs

More quotes by 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.
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Blessed be shock. Blessed be the part of us that protects us from too much pain and sorrow. At the heart of life is a fusebox.
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Most of us get our history through story.
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What works in a story is very different than what works in cinema. For example, dialogue in books: If you translate it too faithfully, it sounds a little stilted, because we often don't speak the way we speak in novels. Oral language is much punchier, shorter sentences.
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Can there be any happiness greater than the happiness of salvation?
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Words are much better at relating emotions and thoughts.
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Life is an interpretation of a series of facts, and that interpretation is really what life is about. So the division between non-fiction and fiction has a certain logic, but it's a very limited one. And by and large, it isn't helpful.
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The presence of God is the finest of rewards.
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The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar.
Yann Martel
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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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It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.
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There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God... These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside.
Yann Martel
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The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.
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Bapu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God.
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It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.
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You can get used to anything - haven't I already said that? Isn't that what all survivors say?
Yann Martel
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A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real.
Yann Martel
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A great literary work can be completely, completely unpredictable. Which can sometimes make them very hard to read, but it gives them a great originality.
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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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