Yann Martel Quotes & Sayings

His father had been his sole supporter, telling him to live for his love for Dora, in precise opposition to his uncle's silent opprobrium. Dora was relegated to invisible duties deep within the kitchen. Gaspar lived equally invisibly in the Lobo household, invisibly loved by his father, who invisibly loved his mother. — Yann Martel

But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it. — Yann Martel

Only death consistently excites your emotions, whether contemplating when life is safe and stale, or fleeing it when life is threatened and precious — Yann Martel

The presence of God is the finest of rewards. — Yann Martel

It was as unbelievable as the moon catching fire. — Yann Martel

Cinema is visually powerful, it is a complete experience, reaches a different audience. It's something I really like. I like movies. — Yann Martel

Mr. Piscine Molitor Patel, Indian citizen, is an astounding story of courage and endurance in the face of extraordinarily difficult and tragic circumstances. In the experience of this investigator, his story is unparalleled in the history of shipwrecks. Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea as Mr. Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger. — Yann Martel

That is the greatness of literature, and its paradox, that in reading about fictional others we end up reading about ourselves. Sometimes this unwitting self-examination provokes smiles of recognition, while other times, ... it provokes shudders of worry and denial. Either way, we are the wiser, we are existentially thicker. — Yann Martel

[T]o be a castaway is to be caught up in grim and exhausting opposites. — Yann Martel

There are many examples of animals coming to surprising living arrangements ... where an animal takes a human being or another animal to be one of it's kind. — Yann Martel

Now comes the difficult part: you must provoke the animal that is afflicting you. Tiger, rhinoceros, ostrich, wild boar, brown bear- no matter the beast, you must get its goat. — Yann Martel

People move because of the wear and tear of anxiety. Because of the gnawing feeling that no matter how hard they work their efforts will yield nothing, that what they build up in one year will be torn down in one day by others. Because of the impression that the future is blocked up, that *they* might do all right but not their children. Because of the feeling that nothing will change, that happiness and prosperity are possible only somewhere else. — Yann Martel

I had in my life looked at a number of beautiful starry nights, where with just two colours and the simplest of styles nature draws the grandest of pictures, and I felt the feelings of wonder and smallness that we all feel, and I got a clear sense of direction from the spectacle, most definitely, but I mean that in a spiritual sense, not in a geographic one. — Yann Martel

The tennis challenger starts strong but soon loses confidence in his playing. The champion racks up the games. But in the final set, when the challenger has nothing left to lose, he becomes relaxed again, insouciant, daring. Suddenly he's playing like the devil and the champion must work hard to get those last points. — Yann Martel

Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths. — Yann Martel

A realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably. — Yann Martel

A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely. — Yann Martel

These people walk by a window deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, "Business as usual" But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. — Yann Martel

It is the irony of this story that the one who scared me witless to start with was the very same who brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even wholeness. — 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

Music is a bird's answer to the noise and heaviness of words. It puts the mind in a state of exhilerated speechlessness. — Yann Martel

I blinked deliberately, expecting my eyelids to act like lumberjacks. But the trees would not fall. — Yann Martel

Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time. Page 212. — Yann Martel

Another favorite position of his was sitting with his back to me, his rear half resting on the floor of the boat and his front half on the bench, his face buried into the stern, paws right next to his head, looking as if we were playing hide-and-seek and he were the one counting. In this position he tended to lie very still, with only the occasional twitching of his ears to indicate that he is not necessarily sleeping. — Yann Martel

Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field-but they're all we have. — Yann Martel

This story has a happy ending. — Yann Martel

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. — Yann Martel

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

Roetown, of mixed economy, neither boom nor bust, just ordinary times - that is, hard - had a slightly run-down aspect, I suppose. But in a pleasing way, like a man you love who has buttoned his coat up wrong. — Yann Martel

That bungled goodbye hurts me to this day. — Yann Martel

I chose the name Pi because it's an irrational number (one with no discernable pattern). Yet scientists use this irrational number to come to a "rational" understanding of the universe. To me, religion is a bit like that, "irrational" yet with it we come together we come to a sound understanding of the universe. — Yann Martel

My suffering left me sad and gloomy. — Yann Martel

Because to suffer and do nothing is to be nothing, while to suffer and do something is to become someone. — Yann Martel

How true is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true. — Yann Martel

Proves to be a devastating hunter. Hyenas attack — Yann Martel

The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving. — Yann Martel

I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion. — Yann Martel

I was determined to move forward. — Yann Martel

Music moves me - duh - and that is like having a window opening on a heightened reality, but the effect is fleeting: When the music ends, the magic, the uplifting, vanishes and the window slams shut. Words, on the other hand, by the nature of how they work, emotions evoked by dint of carefully laid out thoughts, have a more lingering effect. — Yann Martel

It was a placid explosion of orange and red, a great chromatic symphony, a
colour canvas of supernatural proportions, truly a splendid Pacific sunset, quite wasted on me. — Yann Martel

I'm still learning my craft. — Yann Martel

The sky was black and spitting rain on my smiling face. — 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

A plain is what a mountain aims to be: the closest you can come to being in outer space while yet having your feet on this planet. — 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

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

One such time I left town and on my way back, at a point where the land was high and I could see the sea to my left and down the road a long ways, I suddenly felt I was in heaven. The spot was in fact no different from when I had passed it not long before, but my way of seeing it had changed. The feeling, a paradoxical mix of pulsing energy and profound peace, was intense and blissful. Whereas before the road, the sea, the trees, the air, the sun all spoke differently to me, now they spoke one language of unity. Tree took account of road, which was aware of air, which was mindful of sea, which shared things with sun. Every element lived in harmonious relation with its neighbor, and all was kith and kin. I knelt a mortal; I rose an immortal. I felt like the center of a small circle coinciding with the center of a much larger one. — Yann Martel

'Life of Pi' was actually a very simple novel to write. — Yann Martel

No greatness without goodness. — Yann Martel

We are random animals. That is who we are, and we have only ourselves, nothing more-there is no greater relationship. Long before Darwin, a priest lucid in his madness encountered four chimpanzees on a forlorn island in Africa and hit upon a great truth: We are risen apes, not fallen angels. — 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

I went to temple at crowded times when Brahmins were too distracted to come between me and God. — Yann Martel

Or rather, since Christians are so fond of capital letters, a Story. — Yann Martel

Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? — Yann Martel

The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists. — Yann Martel

For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. — Yann Martel

In his entirely personal experience of them, English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was from the streets. Which is to stay, stab his heart and it would bleed French, slice his brain open and its convolutions would be lined with English and German, and touch his hands and they would feel Spanish. — Yann Martel

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. — 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

I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts. — 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

Everything in me, right down to the pores of my skin, was expressing joy. — Yann Martel

The sad fact is there are no natural deaths, despite what doctors say. Every death is felt by someone as a murder, the unjust taking of a loved being. And even the luckiest of us will encounter at least one murder in our own lives: our own. It is our fate. We all live a murder mystery of which we are the victim. — Yann Martel

We are cynical about our own species, but less so about animals, especially wild ones. We might not shelter them from habitat destruction, but we do tend to shelter them from excessive irony. — Yann Martel

I went about the job in a direct way. I took the hatchet in both my hands and vigorously beat the fish on the head with the hammerhead (I still didn't have the stomach to use the sharp edge). The dorado did the most extraordinary thing as it died: it began to flash all kinds of colours in rapid succession. Blue, green, red, gold, and violet flickered and shimmered neon-like on its surface as it struggled. I felt I was beating a rainbow to death. — Yann Martel

How strange, this habit of weeping. Do animals weep? Surely they feel sadness - but do they express it with tears? He doubts it. He has never heard of a weeping cat or dog, or of a weeping wild animal. It seems to be a uniquely human trait. He doesn't see what purpose it serves. He weeps hard, even violently, and at the end of it, what? Desolate tiredness. A handkerchief soaked in tears and mucus. Red eyes for everyone to notice. And weeping is undignified. It lies beyond the tutorials of etiquette and remains a personal idiom, individual in its expression. The twist of face, quantity of tears, quality of sob, pitch of voice, volume of clamour, effect on the complexion, the play of hands, the posture taken: One discovers weeping - one's weeping personality - only upon weeping. It is a strange discovery, not only to others but to oneself. Resolve — Yann Martel

Tiptoe to the water's edge. They show their raiments. — Yann Martel

A germ of religious exaltation, no bigger than a mustard seed. — Yann Martel

I must say a word about fear. It's is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. it begins in your mind, always. — Yann Martel

Some of us give up on life with only a resigned sigh. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others-and I am one of those-never give up. We fight and fight and fight. We fight no matter the cost of battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the very end. It's not a question of courage. It's something constitutional, an inability to let go. — Yann Martel

Gloom is but a shadow of a cloud passing by — Yann Martel

You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better. — Yann Martel

Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud ... — Yann Martel

I go to mass every Sunday, but love going to mosques too. Muslims pray in a beautiful way. — Yann Martel

A zoo is a cultural institution. Like a public library, like a museum, it is at the service of popular education and science. And by that token, not much of a money-making venture for the Greater Good and the Greater Profit are not compatible aims. — Yann Martel

I would nearly go into convulsions of dismay at my stupidity. — Yann Martel

We always see the Holocaust in terms of black-and-white images, barking Germans, cowering Jews. We know very well-known fixed places like Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka, and Beltzec. Instead, war can live in a couple having a spat, when we say, "That was a real war." We very rarely have the Holocaust live in the terms of today. And I think that's a problem, because it becomes ancient history. — Yann Martel

You may be astonished that in such a short period of time I could go from weeping over the muffled killing of a flying fish to gleefully bludgeoning to death a dorado. I could explain it by arguing that profiting from a pitiful flying fish's navigational mistake made me shy and sorrowful, while the excitement of actively capturing a great dorado made me sanguinary and self-assured. But in point of fact the explanation lies elsewhere. It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing. — Yann Martel

Afterwards, when it's all over, you meet God. What do you say to God? — Yann Martel

If I didn't have children, I think my life would be a failure. — Yann Martel

Reality escapes us. It's beyond description, even a simple pear. Time eats everything. — Yann Martel

My heart began to beat
like a merry drum and blood started flowing through my veins like cars from a wedding party
honking their way through town. — Yann Martel

To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures who people the tree of your life and give it new branches. To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It is like losing
I'm sorry, I would rather not go on. — Yann Martel

Only fear can defeat life. — Yann Martel

You might have noticed that I have been sending you used books. I have done this not to save money, but to make a point which is that a used book, unlike a used car, hasn't lost any of its initial value. A good story rolls of the lot into the hands of its new reader as smoothly as the day it was written. And there's another reason for these used paperbacks that never cost much even when new; I like the idea of holding a book that someone else has held, of eyes running over lines that have already seen the light of other eyes. That, in one image, is the community of readers, is the communion of literature. — Yann Martel

It's amazing how willpower can build walls. — Yann Martel

Religion?" Mr Kumar grinned broadly. "I don't believe in religion. Religion is darkness. — Yann Martel

The grand march of progress apparently includes the unfortunate necessity of chopping down every obstacle in its way. — Yann Martel

It's not right that gentleness meet horror. — Yann Martel

In my experience, a castaway's worst mistake is to hope too much and to do too little. — Yann Martel

...for everything has a trace of the divine in it. — Yann Martel

I tell you, to be drunk on alcohol is disgraceful, but to be drunk on water is noble and ecstatic. — Yann Martel

So you want another story?"
Uhh ... no. We would like to know what really happened."
Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?"
Uhh ... perhaps in English. In Japanese a story would have an element of invention in it. We don't want any invention. We want the 'straight facts,' as you say in English."
Isn't telling about something
using words, English or Japanese
already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention? — Yann Martel

Right away, death is word-eating. — Yann Martel

Animals don't escape from somewhere but from something — Yann Martel

Hungry, tired, eyes sore, dying to pee, I would sit and take in every conceivable kind of movie. The only criterion for being shown at Canadian Images was that a movie be Canadian. It — Yann Martel

The animals might embody certain traits. We think of tigers as being ferocious, etc. But to my mind, it was the other way around: the humans embodied certain animal traits. — Yann Martel

It was frightening, the extent to which a full belly made for a good mood. — Yann Martel

What his uncle does not understand is that in walking backwards, his back to the world, his back to God, he is not grieving. He is objecting. Because when everything cherished by you in life has been taken away, what else is there to do but object? — Yann Martel

I preferred to set off and perish in search of my own kind than to live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and spiritual death on this murderous island. — Yann Martel