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I spent more hours than I can count a quiet witness to the highly mannered, manifold expressions of life that grace our planet. It is something so bright, loud, weird and delicate as to stupefy the senses.

Yann Martel

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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Expression
Witness
Grace
Loud
Mannered
Hours
Weird
Manifold
Earth
Senses
Expressions
Something
Spent
Delicate
Life
Planet
Highly
Planets
Count
Quiet
Bright

More quotes by Yann Martel

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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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High calls low and low calls high. I tell you, if you were in such dire straits as I was, you too would elevate your thoughts. The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar.
Yann Martel
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Music is a bird's answer to the noise and heaviness of words. It puts the mind in a state of exhilarated speechlessness.
Yann Martel
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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
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My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.
Yann Martel
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A realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably.
Yann Martel
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If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?
Yann Martel
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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.
Yann Martel
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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.
Yann Martel
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Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
Yann Martel
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If you are pitched into misery, remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left.
Yann Martel
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Christianity is a religion in a rush. Look at the world created in seven says. Even on a symbolic lovel, that's creation in frenzy.
Yann Martel
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It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.
Yann Martel
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The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar. It was natural that, bereft and desperate as I was, in the throes of unremitting suffering. I should turn to God
Yann Martel
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Christianity stretches back through the ages, but in essence it exists only at one time: right now.
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.
Yann Martel
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My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.
Yann Martel
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My greatest wish — other than salvation — was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time.
Yann Martel
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It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion.
Yann Martel
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I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.
Yann Martel