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Work, work, work, but what mark do we leave, what point do we make? People who are too beholden to work become like erasers: as things move forward, they leave in their wake no trace of themselves.
Yann Martel
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Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
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More quotes by Yann Martel
Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror.
Yann Martel
Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you Richard Parker!
Yann Martel
In a movie, you need good actors, whereas in a book, you don't, unless you have a really bad imagination. In a book, your imagination will do the acting for you. Also, the process of revelation is often different. Tension is achieved in a different way.
Yann Martel
Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.
Yann Martel
Don’t you bully me with your politeness!
Yann Martel
As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound.
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
You bring joy and pain in equal measure. Joy because you are with me, but pain because it wont be for long.
Yann Martel
We are all born like Catholics, aren't we—in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?
Yann Martel
A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.
Yann Martel
Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life.
Yann Martel
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.
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
Art is a gift: you create and then you give away. How readers receive that gift is their business. If they hate it, that’s their response to it. Others respond by liking it. Either way, that is their interaction with the book, which is no longer mine.
Yann Martel
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.
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
I love Canada...It is a great country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos.
Yann Martel
Books, like people, can't be reduced to the cost of the materials with which they were made. Books, like people, become unique and precious once you get to know them.
Yann Martel
How does one say in the jargon of musicology that my sould was pulled out of me and thrown up in the air, to be tossed about by the music. How does one say that I breathed, that I existed, in harmony with the ups and downs of those notes. What kind of notes both elevate and cast down, exalt and crush?
Yann Martel
Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind, my heart.
Yann Martel