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Yann Martel Quotes
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Yann Martel is a Spanish-born Canadian author best known for the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi, a #1 international bestseller published in more than 50 territories. It has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and spent more than a year on the Bestseller Lists of the New York Times and The Globe and Mail, among many other best-selling lists. It was adapted to the screen and directed by Ang Lee, garnering four Oscars including Best Director and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score.Martel is also the author of the novels The High Mountains of Portugal, Beatrice and Virgil and Self, the collection of stories The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, and a collection of letters to the prime minister of Canada, 101 Letters to a Prime Minister. He has won a number of literary prizes, including the 2001 Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the 2002 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature.He lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, with the writer Alice Kuipers and their four children.Although his first language is French, Yann Martel writes in English: "English is the language in which I best express the subtlety of life. But I must say that French is the language closest to my heart. And for this same reason, English gives me a sufficient distance to write." Wikipedia  

✵ 25. June 1963  •  Other names یان مارتل, Янн Мартел
Yann Martel photo
Yann Martel: 108 quotes4 likes

Yann Martel Quotes

“I cannot think of a better way to spread the faith. No thundering from a pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book of scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little girl's kiss on your cheek.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 73, p. 230

“Gloom is but a shadow of a cloud passing by”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

“It's amazing how willpower can build walls.”

Yann Martel

“.. the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Variant: We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.
Source: Life of Pi

“Stories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.”

Yann Martel book Beatrice and Virgil

Source: Beatrice and Virgil

“It was as unbelievable as the moon catching fire.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

“Don’t worry about being good…. Aspire to be authentic.”

Yann Martel book Beatrice and Virgil

Source: Beatrice and Virgil

“It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse." Page 316”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Variant: It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse.
Source: Life of Pi

“A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

“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 book Beatrice and Virgil

Source: Beatrice and Virgil

“science can only take you so far and then you have to leap”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

“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 book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

“Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

“Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them -- and then they leap.”

Yann Martel

“To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity.”

Yann Martel

Variant: To me religion is about our dignity not our depravity

“Christianity is a religion in a rush.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

“The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

“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.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

“Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans." Yann Martel in Life of Pi, Page 25”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

“Socially inferior animals are the ones that make the most strenuous, resourceful efforts to get to know their keepers. They prove to be the ones most faithful to them…it is a fact commonly known in the trade.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

“If you are pitched into misery, remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left.”

Yann Martel book Beatrice and Virgil

Source: Beatrice and Virgil

“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 book Beatrice and Virgil

Source: Beatrice and Virgil

“Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time." Page 212.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Variant: I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.
Source: Life of Pi

“There were many seas. The sea roared like a tiger. The sea whispered in your ear like a friend telling you secrets. The sea clinked like small change in a pocket. The sea thundered like avalanches. The sea hissed like sandpaper working on wood. The sea sounded like someone vomiting. The sea was dead silent.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 78, p. 239

“An apple resists being eaten. An apple is not eaten, it is conquered. The crunchiness of a pear is far more appealing. It is giving and fragile. To eat a pear is akin to … kissing.”

Yann Martel

Source: Beatrice & Virgil (2010), p. 50

“For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 25, p. 78

“If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 99, p. 330

“My greatest wish — other than salvation — was to have a book.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 73, p. 230

“Here was irrefutable proof that he was using the Holocaust to speak of the extermination of animal life. Doomed creatures that could not speak for themselves were being given the voice of a most articulate people who had been similarly doomed. He was seeing the tragic fate of animals through the tragic fate of Jews. The Holocaust as allegory.”

Yann Martel

Source: Beatrice & Virgil (2010), p. 173

“Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food is low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 4, p. 17

“"Bapu Gandhi said, 'All religions are true.' I just want to love God," I blurted out, and looked down, red in the face.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 23, p. 76

“[The taxidermist is] a historian, dealing with an animal's past; the zookeeper is a politician, dealing with an animal's present; and everyone else is a citizen who must decide on that animal's future (…) The indifference of the many, combined with the active hatred of the few, has sealed the fate of animals.”

Yann Martel

Source: Beatrice & Virgil (2010), p. 97

“It was Richard Parker who calmed me down. 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 book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 57, p. 179

“Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field.”

Yann Martel

Source: Beatrice & Virgil (2010), p. 114

“Then Richard Parker, companion of my torment, awful, fierce thing that kept me alive, moved forward and disappeared forever from my life.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 94, p. 316