Yann Martel Quotes

When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.

— 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

“These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. 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

“If there's only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it?”

— Yann Martel

“'Life of Pi' was actually a very simple novel to write.”

— Yann Martel

If a film project were available and the timing was right, I might be interested.

— 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

I'm still learning my craft.

— Yann Martel

“Words aren't very good at describing complicated, strange visual things. You can try, and the reader will have some sort of image in their mind, but words aren't good at that.”

— Yann Martel

“Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when they are not preoccupied with science.”

— Yann Martel

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

“My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.”

— Yann Martel

“Oncoming death is terrible enough, but worse still is oncoming death with time to spare, time in which all the happiness that was yours and all the happiness that might have been yours becomes clear to you. You see with utter lucidity all that you are losing.”

— Yann Martel

“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

“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

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

— 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

I can only tell my story, what you believe is up to you.

— Yann Martel

“If you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside down and shook it you would be amazed at the animals that fall out: badgers, wolves, boa constrictors, crocodiles, ostriches, baboons, capybaras, wild boars, leopards, manatees, ruminants, in untold numbers. There is no doubt in my mind that that feral giraffes and feral hippos have been living in Tokyo for generations without seeing a soul.”

— Yann Martel

“We are all born like Catholics ... in limbo, without religion.”

— 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

“I have read that there are two fears that cannot be trained out of us: the startle reaction upon hearing an unexpected noise, and vertigo. I would like to add a third, to wit, the rapid and direct approch of a known killer”

— 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

“There are no grounds for going beyond a scientific explanation of reality and no sound reason for believing anything but our sense experience. A clear intellect, close attention to detail and a little scientific knowledge will expose religion as superstitious bosh. God does not exist.
Why tolerate darkness? Everything is here and clear, if only we look carefully.”

— Yann Martel

Bapu Ghandi said, "All religions are true." I just want to love God, " I blurted out, and looked down, red in the face.
My embarassment was contagious. No one said anything. It happened that we were not far from the statue of Gandhi on the esplanade. Stick in hand, an impish smile on his lips, a twinkle in his eyes, the Mahatma walked. I fancy that he heard our conversation, but that he paid even greater attention to my heart, Father cleared his throat and said in a half-voice, " I suppose that's what wer're all trying to do - love God.

— Yann Martel

“He found it where he should have looked first, on the Internet, which is a net indeed, one that can be cast further than the eye can see and be retrieved no matter how heavy the hall, its magical mesh never breaking under the strain but always bringing in the most amazing catch.”

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

— Yann Martel

“A good zoo is a place of carefully worked-out coincidence: exactly where an animal says to us, "Stay out!" ... we say to it, "Stay in!" with our barriers. Under such conditions of diplomatic peace, all animals are content and we can relax and have a look at each other.”

— Yann Martel

“If there is a change, it is usually for the lesser rather than the greater; many people seem to lose God along life's way.”

— Yann Martel

“I am careful never to talk about religion. Who am I to kick at people's crutches?”

— Yann Martel

Above all, don't lose hope

— Yann Martel

“My life is like a memento more painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.”

— Yann Martel

We must do the same with death in our lives: resolve it, give it meaning, put it into context, however hard that might be.

— 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 rooted in joy.”

— Yann Martel

“That I was a swimmer made no waves; it seems to be a law of human nature
that those who live by the sea are suspicious of swimmers, just as those who live in the mountains are suspicious of mountain climbers.”

— 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

For example
I wonder
could you tell my jumbled story in exactly one hundred chapters, not one more, not one less? I'll tell you, that's one thing I hate about my nickname, the way that number runs on forever. It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go.

— Yann Martel

What is the purpose of reason, Richard Parker? Is it no more than to shine at practicalities - the getting of food, clothing and shelter? 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 of there's so little fish to catch?

— Yann Martel

“English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was the music from the streets.”

— Yann Martel

“Stories full of metaphors are by writers who play the language like a mandolin for our entertainment, novelists,”

— Yann Martel

“I began to wait. My thoughts swung wildly. I was either fixed on practical details of immediate survival or transfixed by pain, weeping silently, my mouth open and my hands on my head.”

— 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

Loneliness comes up to him like a sniffing dog. It circles him insistently. He waves it away, but it refuses to leave him alone.

— Yann Martel

We're all busy. Meditating monks in their cells are busy. That's adult life, filled to the ceiling with things that need doing. (It seems only children and the elderly aren't plagued by lack of time-and notice how they enjoy their books, how their lives fill their eyes.) But every person has a space next to where they sleep, whether a patch of pavement or a fine bedside table. In that space, at night, a book can glow. And in those moments of docile wakefulness, when we begin to let go of the day, then is the perfect time to pick up a book and be someone else, somewhere else, for a few minutes, a few pages, before we fall asleep.

— 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

“Just do it. Get it down on the page. Work hard. And then let go. Ask yourself why you want to write. You have to be clear about that.”

— Yann Martel

“The planet is populated by human beings, of which there are only two sexes, and the role of the writer is to explore otherness, other realities. So the idea of a man exploring what it's like to be a woman doesn't strike me as being that wild or crazy an idea.”

— Yann Martel

“The three religions because I wanted to discuss faith, not organized religion, so wanted to relativize organized religion by having Pi practice three. I would have like PI to be a Jew, too, to practice Judaism, but there are two religions that are explicitly incompatible: Christianity and Judaism. Where one begins, the other ends, according to Christians, and where one endures, the other strays, according to Jews.”

— Yann Martel