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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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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Read
Hard
Sometimes
Giving
Unpredictable
Great
Originality
Work
Literary
Make
Completely
Gives

More quotes by Yann Martel

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I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye.
Yann Martel
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First wonder goes deepest wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first.
Yann Martel
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Truth is a nebulous thing. There are certain, definite truths, but the truth of our lives goes far beyond facts.
Yann Martel
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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.
Yann Martel
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The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table. That which sustains the universe beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression, is the same thing. The finite within the infinite, the infinite within the finite.
Yann Martel
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I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful.
Yann Martel
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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.
Yann Martel
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To me, the research is a way of exploring what it means to be alive.
Yann Martel
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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
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How true is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.
Yann Martel
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Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans.
Yann Martel
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Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away.
Yann Martel
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...animals don't escape from somewhere but from something
Yann Martel
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Music moves me - duh - and that is like having a window opening on a heightened reality, but the effect is fleeting: When the music ends, the magic, the uplifting, vanishes and the window slams shut. Words, on the other hand, by the nature of how they work, emotions evoked by dint of carefully laid out thoughts, have a more lingering effect.
Yann Martel
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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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My ears were full. Nothing more, not one more sound, could push into them and be registered.
Yann Martel
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How long does it take for a broken spirit to kill a body that has food, water and shelter?
Yann Martel
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Progress is unstoppable. It is a drumbeat to which we must all march. Technology helps and good ideas spread – these are two lows of nature. If you don’t let technology help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaurhood! I am utterly convinced of this.
Yann Martel
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Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited.
Yann Martel
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Stories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.
Yann Martel