Quote

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.

Yann Martel

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Havens
Doe
Haven
Live
Feel
Literature
Imaginatively
Feels
Pain
Ideologues
Thing
Making
Empathetic
Lives
Empathy
Makes
Skins
Others

More quotes by Yann Martel

Image
We believe what we see.’...What do you do when you’re in the dark?
Yann Martel
Image
Bapu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God.
Yann Martel
Image
The language of prose is very different than the language of cinema, so the movie has to successfully translate what was in the book.
Yann Martel
Image
You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better.
Yann Martel
Image
I can't live for more than four years outside of Canada. I'm Canadian, so ultimately that is my reference point.
Yann Martel
Image
I go to mass every Sunday, but love going to mosques too. Muslims pray in a beautiful way.
Yann Martel
Image
It was a huge zoo, spread over numberless acres, big enough to require a train to explore it, though it seemed to get smaler as I grew older, train included. Now it's so small it fits in my head.
Yann Martel
Image
If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?
Yann Martel
Image
It's amazing how willpower can build walls.
Yann Martel
Image
Isn't telling about something-using words, English or Japanese-already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention?
Yann Martel
Image
Truth is a nebulous thing. There are certain, definite truths, but the truth of our lives goes far beyond facts.
Yann Martel
Image
Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when they are not preoccupied with science.
Yann Martel
Image
Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror.
Yann Martel
Image
Religion is more than rite and ritual.
Yann Martel
Image
I am not a particularly natural writer. I am not a person who can write in paragraphs the way some writers do. For me, it's sentence by sentence, sometimes word-by-word. And I revise constantly. It's a very laborious process, but I love doing it.
Yann Martel
Image
I wept like a child. It was not because I was overcome at having survived my ordeal, though I was. Nor was it the presence of my brothers and sisters, though that too was very moving. I was weeping because ....fill in the blank with whatever/whoever helped you survive... had left me so unceremoniously.
Yann Martel
Image
The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?
Yann Martel
Image
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.
Yann Martel
Image
If there's only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it?
Yann Martel
Image
The animals might embody certain traits. We think of tigers as being ferocious, etc. But to my mind, it was the other way around: the humans embodied certain animal traits.
Yann Martel