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I have read that there are two fears that cannot be trained out of us: the startle reaction upon hearing an unexpected noise, and vertigo. I would like to add a third, to wit, the rapid and direct approch of a known killer

Yann Martel

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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Upon
Reactions
Rapids
Read
Add
Killer
Two
Noise
Killers
Cannot
Third
Trained
Would
Thirds
Reaction
Startle
Like
Hearing
Wit
Direct
Unexpected
Vertigo
Known
Fears
Rapid

More quotes by Yann Martel

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He's a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.
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We believe what we see.’...What do you do when you’re in the dark?
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When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.
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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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You bring joy and pain in equal measure. Joy because you are with me, but pain because it wont be for long.
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Christianity is a religion in a rush.
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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.
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The language of prose is very different than the language of cinema, so the movie has to successfully translate what was in the book.
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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.
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To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity.
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The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving.
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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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Art is a gift: you create and then you give away. How readers receive that gift is their business. If they hate it, that’s their response to it. Others respond by liking it. Either way, that is their interaction with the book, which is no longer mine.
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Books are something social - a writer speaking to a reader - so I think making the reading of a book the center of a social event, the meeting of a book club, is a brilliant idea.
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Oncoming death is terrible enough, but worse still is oncoming death with time to spare, time in which all the happiness that was yours and all the happiness that might have been yours becomes clear to you. You see with utter lucidity all that you are losing.
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We were, literally and figuratively, in the same boat.
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The presence of God is the finest of rewards.
Yann Martel
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We think we live in a global village. We don't. The world is a big and beautiful and incredibly varied place. It can only be known locally, with your two feet on the ground. We should stick to our own gardens, as Voltaire said.
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I can only tell my story, what you believe is up to you.
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Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind, my heart.
Yann Martel