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Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction.

Yann Martel

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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Mean
Interpretation
Extent
Fiction
Imagination
Means
Reality
Part
Volition
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Interpret

More quotes by Yann Martel

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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.
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Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.
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You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better.
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Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.
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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.
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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
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You bring joy and pain in equal measure. Joy because you are with me, but pain because it wont be for long.
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My next book - each one while I'm working on it - dances in my mind and thrills me at every turn. If it didn't, why would I write it?
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Afterwards, when it's all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?
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Artists invent things as a way of telling the truth.
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A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real.
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India is a place where all stories are possible. You forget that the imagination can take hold of anything and contemplate it and love it and describe it.
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At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far.
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A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.
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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.
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Religion is just an alternate way of reading reality - you read material reality, and then you add on an extra layer of religiosity that deepens that understanding of reality. Some countries have lost that capacity, or dismissed it or marginalized it.
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When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.
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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.
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I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.
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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.
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