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My greatest wish - other than salvation - was to have a book.

Yann Martel

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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Salvation
Greatest
Wish
Book

More quotes by 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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science can only take you so far and then you have to leap
Yann Martel
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It is a vast country, so that inspires you. It's also the greatest hotel on earth: It welcomes people from everywhere. It's a good country to write from because in many ways Canada is the world.
Yann Martel
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Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness--how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I've got!
Yann Martel
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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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There's no peace like the peace of an inner courtyard on a sunny day.
Yann Martel
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Fanatics do not have faith - they have belief. With faith you let go. You trust. Whereas with belief you cling.
Yann Martel
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When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.
Yann Martel
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Why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch?
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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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
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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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A movie tends to box you in, at least as far as the aesthetics. You have an incredibly kinetic experience, which is the joy of cinema.
Yann Martel
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If literature does one thing, it makes you more empathetic by making you live other lives and feel the pain of others. Ideologues don't feel the pain of others because they haven't imaginatively got under their skins.
Yann Martel
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A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real.
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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You bring joy and pain in equal measure. Joy because you are with me, but pain because it wont be for long.
Yann Martel
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We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.
Yann Martel
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If there's only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it?
Yann Martel
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It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.
Yann Martel