Quote

People always seek to compare. They can take the new, but only if it is somehow connected to the familiar. We need that in our lives, the mix of the new and the old. But of course I'm flattered about the comparison with Old man and the sea. Hemingway is a great writer.

Yann Martel

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Yann Martel
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 25
Author
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Needs
Seek
Hemingway
Always
Writer
Flattered
Men
Courses
Comparison
People
Course
Compare
Lives
Familiar
Need
Somehow
Take
Connected
Great
Sea

More quotes by Yann Martel

Image
There is nothing more satisfying than having a sentence fall into place in a way you feel is right, and then adding another one and then another one. It's extraordinarily satisfying.
Yann Martel
Image
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
Image
No one dies of nausea, but it can seriously sap the will to live.
Yann Martel
Image
A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.
Yann Martel
Image
We were, literally and figuratively, in the same boat.
Yann Martel
Image
My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.
Yann Martel
Image
I wept like a child. It was not because I was overcome at having survived my ordeal, though I was. Nor was it the presence of my brothers and sisters, though that too was very moving. I was weeping because ....fill in the blank with whatever/whoever helped you survive... had left me so unceremoniously.
Yann Martel
Image
Most of us get our history through story.
Yann Martel
Image
My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
Yann Martel
Image
Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.
Yann Martel
Image
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
Image
If you don't let technology help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaurhood.
Yann Martel
Image
First wonder goes deepest wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first.
Yann Martel
Image
I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point or a lion merely turning its head. But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it.
Yann Martel
Image
Words are much better at relating emotions and thoughts.
Yann Martel
Image
Progress is unstoppable. It is a drumbeat to which we must all march. Technology helps and good ideas spread – these are two lows of nature. If you don’t let technology help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaurhood! I am utterly convinced of this.
Yann Martel
Image
Bapu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God.
Yann Martel
Image
...if you fall into a lion's pit, the reason the lion will tear you to pieces is not because it's hungry-be assured, zoo animals are amply fed-or because it's bloodthirsty, but because you've invaded it's territory.
Yann Martel
Image
The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.
Yann Martel
Image
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