Quote

Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.

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
Reason
Tigers
Nothing
Throwing
Reasonable
Keeping
Beats
Risk
Universe
Bathwater
Away
Excessively

More quotes by Yann Martel

Image
Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them -- and then they leap.
Yann Martel
Image
Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love—but sometimes it was so hard to love. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up.
Yann Martel
Image
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.
Yann Martel
Image
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.
Yann Martel
Image
Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed.
Yann Martel
Image
It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.
Yann Martel
Image
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.
Yann Martel
Image
War subjects itself to transportation in a way that we find acceptable.
Yann Martel
Image
The planet is populated by human beings, of which there are only two sexes, and the role of the writer is to explore otherness, other realities. So the idea of a man exploring what it's like to be a woman doesn't strike me as being that wild or crazy an idea.
Yann Martel
Image
If you don't have dreams, how do you maneuver reality? Where do you get the ideas to change reality if not from dreams?
Yann Martel
Image
Don’t worry about being good…. Aspire to be authentic.
Yann Martel
Image
We believe what we see.’...What do you do when you’re in the dark?
Yann Martel
Image
I explore it now in the only place left for it, my memory.
Yann Martel
Image
I couldn't get Him out of my head. Still can't. I spent three solid days thinking about Him. The more He bothered me, the less I coul forget Him. And the more I learned about Him, the less I wanted to leave Him.
Yann Martel
Image
Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life.
Yann Martel
Image
How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer, but art is very self-referential, whereas religion claims to go beyond the bounds of human existence.
Yann Martel
Image
My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.
Yann Martel
Image
Art is the suitcase of history, carrying the essentials. Art is the life buoy of history. Art is seed, art is memory, art is vaccine.
Yann Martel
Image
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
Image
In a movie, you need good actors, whereas in a book, you don't, unless you have a really bad imagination. In a book, your imagination will do the acting for you. Also, the process of revelation is often different. Tension is achieved in a different way.
Yann Martel