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I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape.
Yann Martel
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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Things
Order
Form
Give
Persons
Believes
Person
Meaningful
Must
Shape
Giving
Harmony
Believe
Shapes
More quotes by Yann Martel
[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
Mockery be damned, my urine looked delicious.
Yann Martel
Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.
Yann Martel
Sitting in an office for TOO long is not natural, perhaps, so that's why we should change it. I didn't say that out-and-out capitalism, which reduces humanity to dollar figures, is natural.
Yann Martel
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
Life is an interpretation of a series of facts, and that interpretation is really what life is about. So the division between non-fiction and fiction has a certain logic, but it's a very limited one. And by and large, it isn't helpful.
Yann Martel
My zoology thesis was a functional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. I chose the sloth because its demeanour - calm, quiet and introspective - did something to soothe my shattered self.
Yann Martel
Even when God seemed to have abandoned me, he was watching. Even when he seemed indifferent to my suffering, he was watching. And when I was beyond all hope of saving, he gave me rest. Then he gave me a sign to continue my journey.
Yann Martel
Books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play baseball or soccer, and mine was the gangly, unathletic kid that no one wanted on their team.
Yann Martel
It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.
Yann Martel
It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.
Yann Martel
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
In my youth, it was my good luck to have a few good teachers, men and women, who came into my head and lit a match.
Yann Martel
For the first time I noticed - as I would notice repeatedly during my ordeal, between one throe of agony and the next - that my suffering was taking place in a grand setting. I saw my suffering for what it was, finite and insignificant, and I was still. My suffering did not fit anywhere, I realized. And I could accept this. It was all right.
Yann Martel
I love Canada...It is a great country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos.
Yann Martel
We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.
Yann Martel
Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.
Yann Martel
You can get used to anything - haven't I already said that? Isn't that what all survivors say?
Yann Martel
A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.
Yann Martel
Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food is low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured.
Yann Martel