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Was it the forgetfulness of old age or personal incapacity that made the man able to say please but not thank you?

Yann Martel

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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Please
Personal
Age
Able
Made
Men
Incapacity
Forgetfulness
Thank

More quotes by Yann Martel

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Artists invent things as a way of telling the truth.
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Gloom is but a shadow of a cloud passing by
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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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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.
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I ask you, is it the fig tree's fault that it's not the season for figs? What kind of thing is that to do to an innocent tree, wither it instantly?
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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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Even when God seemed to have abandoned me, he was watching. Even when he seemed indifferent to my suffering, he was watching. And when I was beyond all hope of saving, he gave me rest. Then he gave me a sign to continue my journey.
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It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.
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Christianity is a religion in a rush.
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It's hard to visualize James Bond without seeing one of the actors who played him. And it's hard to visualize Harry Potter without seeing Daniel Radcliffe. A movie is so visually powerful, so overwhelming, that it tends to crowd out how you might have imagined things.
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When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.
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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.
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If literature does one thing, it makes you more empathetic by making you live other lives and feel the pain of others. Ideologues don't feel the pain of others because they haven't imaginatively got under their skins.
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If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.
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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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Just as art brings you to another place, so does religion - and to ask questions of factuality tends to reduce both. If you say you were inspired by a novel, that implies that your book is a work of fiction.
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First wonder goes deepest wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first.
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These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.
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My next book - each one while I'm working on it - dances in my mind and thrills me at every turn. If it didn't, why would I write it?
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I felt I was beating a rainbow to death
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