Yann Martel Quotes

We are all born like Catholics, aren't we—in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God?

Books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play baseball or soccer, and mine was the gangly, unathletic kid that no one wanted on their team.

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

Most of us get our history through story.

Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.

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

As much as I love movies, it would be presumptuous of me to think that I know how to make one.

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.

I find that movies tend to fix the aesthetics of a story in people's minds.

A movie tends to box you in, at least as far as the aesthetics. You have an incredibly kinetic experience, which is the joy of cinema.

War subjects itself to transportation in a way that we find acceptable.

To me, the research is a way of exploring what it means to be alive.

In art, something comes of nothing. Out of the thin air and the ether, you create a story. And that is intensely satisfying.

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.

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

Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous possessive love that grabs at what it can.

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

He seems to be attracting religions the way a dog attracts fleas.

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

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity- its envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can.

I knew very little about the religion. [Christianity] It had a reputation for few gods and great violence. But good schools.

Like punk rock, like Jackson Pollock, like Jack Kerouac, it was truly human, a mix of perfect beauty and cathartic error.

To her, writing is making stock and reading is sipping broth, but only the spoken word is the full roasted chicken.

The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no?Doesn't that make life a story?

I thought I knew not only her habits but also her limits. This display of ferocity, of savage courage, made me realize that I was wrong. All my life I had known only a part of her.

Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer.

Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is color that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.

I suppose in the end the whole of life becomes an act of letting go. But what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye.

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent.

We are random animals. That is who we are, and we have only ourselves, nothing more--there is no greater relationship.

Time and sunshine healed a sore, but the process was slow, and new boils appeared if I didn't stay dry.

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.

Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can get.

The holy word is story, and story is the holy word.

It seems to be a law of human nature that those who live by the sea are suspiciousof swimmers, just as those who live in the mountains are suspicious of mountainclimbers.

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

Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?

My developing sense was that the foundation of a story is an emotional foundation. If a story does not work emotionally, it does not work at all.

Come aboard if your destination is oblivion - it should be our next stop.

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

Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression.

The indifference of the many, combined with the active hatred of the few, has sealed the fate of animals.

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity--it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can.

All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways.

All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in a strange, sometimes inexplicable ways.

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life.

There are many ways in which life's little candle can be snuffed out. A cold wind pursues us all.

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity - it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can.

Under the pathologist's microscope, life and death fight in an illuminated circle in a sort of cellular bullfight. The pathologist's job is to find the bull among the matador cells

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.