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

More quotes by Yann Martel

Image
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
Image
[The taxidermist is] a historian, dealing with an animal's past the zookeeper is a politician, dealing with an animal's present and everyone else is a citizen who must decide on that animal's future (...) The indifference of the many, combined with the active hatred of the few, has sealed the fate of animals.
Yann Martel
Image
Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths.
Yann Martel
Image
As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound.
Yann Martel
Image
Any writer will be happy and good only if they know what they're doing and why they're doing it.
Yann Martel
Image
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
Image
I go to mass every Sunday, but love going to mosques too. Muslims pray in a beautiful way.
Yann Martel
Image
Dawn came and matters were worse for it. Because now, emerging from the darkness, I could see, what before I had only felt, the great curtains of rain crashing down on me from towering heights and the waves that threw a path over me and trod me underfoot one after another.
Yann Martel
Image
I meet a number of people as a writer of fiction who say Oh, I don't read much fiction, as if the history of the United States, just as an example, isn't an exercise in storytelling and myth-making.
Yann Martel
Image
If there's only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it?
Yann Martel
Image
To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.
Yann Martel
Image
I explore it now in the only place left for it, my memory.
Yann Martel
Image
Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.
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
My greatest wish - other than salvation - was to have a book.
Yann Martel
Image
There are animals we haven't stopped by. Don't think they're harmless. Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
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.
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
Image
science can only take you so far and then you have to leap
Yann Martel
Image
Christianity is a religion in a rush.
Yann Martel