110+ Yann Martel Quotes (Imaginative, Whimsical And Thought-provoking)

Yann Martel is a Canadian author best known for his 2001 novel Life of Pi. He has written several other novels, short stories, and non-fiction works, and has also translated works from Portuguese and Spanish into English. Martel has won numerous awards, including the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Life of Pi.

Top 10 Yann Martel Quotes

1. You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.
2. My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.
6. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.
7. 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!
8. We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.
9. I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.
10. No one dies of nausea, but it can seriously sap the will to live.

Yann Martel Short Quotes

• If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?
• I turned around, stepped over the Zebra and threw myself overboard.
• The presence of God is the finest of rewards.
• When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.
• Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life.
• You can get used to anything - haven't I already said that? Isn't that what all survivors say?
• My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
• Much hostile and aggressive behaviour among animals is the expression of social insecurity.
• To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity.
• Religion is more than rite and ritual.

Yann Martel Famous Quotes And Sayings

Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror. — Yann Martel

I have a fierce will to live. 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. — Yann Martel

The paths to liberation are numerous, but the bank along the way is always the same, the Bank of Karma, where the liberation account of each of us is credited or debited depending on our actions. — Yann Martel

It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names. — Yann Martel

Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction. — Yann Martel

Truth is a nebulous thing. There are certain, definite truths, but the truth of our lives goes far beyond facts. — Yann Martel

My zoology thesis was a functional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. I chose the sloth because its demeanour - calm, quiet and introspective - did something to soothe my shattered self. — 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

Work, work, work, but what mark do we leave, what point do we make? People who are too beholden to work become like erasers: as things move forward, they leave in their wake no trace of themselves. — Yann Martel

When the course of experience made me see that there is no saviour and no special grace, no remission beyond the human, that pain is to be endured and fades, if it fades, only with time, then God became nothing to me but a dyslexic dog, with neither bark nor bite. — Yann Martel

Japanese-owned cargo ship Tsimtsum, flying Panamanian flag, sank July 2nd, 1977, in Pacific, four days out of Manila. Am in lifeboat. Pi Patel my name. Have some food, some water, but Bengal tiger a serious problem. Please advise family in Winnepeg, Canada. Any help very much appreciated. Thank you. — Yann Martel

I love Canada...It is a great country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos. — Yann Martel

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? — Yann Martel

All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive. — Yann Martel

Come aboard if your destination is oblivion- it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat if you want. But it's a sad view. — Yann Martel

Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher. — Yann Martel

Nature can put on a thrilling show. The stage is vast, the lighting is dramatic, the extras are innumerable, and the budget for special effects is absolutely unlimited. — Yann Martel

Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart. — Yann Martel

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. — Yann Martel

The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar. It was natural that, bereft and desperate as I was, in the throes of unremitting suffering. I should turn to God — 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 am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape. — Yann Martel

Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed. — Yann Martel

I spent more hours than I can count a quiet witness to the highly mannered, manifold expressions of life that grace our planet. It is something so bright, loud, weird and delicate as to stupefy the senses. — Yann Martel

That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence? — Yann Martel

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

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

My gratitude to him is as boundless as the Pacific ocean. — Yann Martel

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity – it’s envy. — Yann Martel

If you stumble about believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe? — Yann Martel

If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams. — Yann Martel

The language of prose is very different than the language of cinema, so the movie has to successfully translate what was in the book. — Yann Martel

My next book - each one while I'm working on it - dances in my mind and thrills me at every turn. If it didn't, why would I write it? — Yann Martel

Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they've known for a great unknown beyond the horizon? ... The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life. — 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

My greatest wish — other than salvation — was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I could read again and again, with new eyes and a fresh understanding each time. — Yann Martel

It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. — Yann Martel

The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar. — Yann Martel

It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. — Yann Martel

Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love. — Yann Martel

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. — Yann Martel

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

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

I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality. — Yann Martel

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. — Yann Martel

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

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

What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell. — Yann Martel

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

Even when God seemed to have abandoned me, he was watching. Even when he seemed indifferent to my suffering, he was watching. And when I was beyond all hope of saving, he gave me rest. Then he gave me a sign to continue my journey. — 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

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

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

Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you Richard Parker! — Yann Martel

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

We think we live in a global village. We don't. The world is a big and beautiful and incredibly varied place. It can only be known locally, with your two feet on the ground. We should stick to our own gardens, as Voltaire said. — Yann Martel

It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion. — Yann Martel

Dawn came and matters were worse for it. Because now, emerging from the darkness, I could see, what before I had only felt, the great curtains of rain crashing down on me from towering heights and the waves that threw a path over me and trod me underfoot one after another. — Yann Martel

There's no peace like the peace of an inner courtyard on a sunny day. — Yann Martel

High calls low and low calls high. I tell you, if you were in such dire straits as I was, you too would elevate your thoughts. The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar. — Yann Martel

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

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

How long does it take for a broken spirit to kill a body that has food, water and shelter? — Yann Martel

It was as unbelievable as the moon catching fire. — 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

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

Mockery be damned, my urine looked delicious. — 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

I've never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart. I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. The pain is like an axe that chops my heart. — Yann Martel

There are animals we haven't stopped by. Don't think they're harmless. Life will defend itself no matter how small it is. — 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

Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love—but sometimes it was so hard to love. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up. — Yann Martel

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

How does one say in the jargon of musicology that my sould was pulled out of me and thrown up in the air, to be tossed about by the music. How does one say that I breathed, that I existed, in harmony with the ups and downs of those notes. What kind of notes both elevate and cast down, exalt and crush? — Yann Martel

It's hard to visualize James Bond without seeing one of the actors who played him. And it's hard to visualize Harry Potter without seeing Daniel Radcliffe. A movie is so visually powerful, so overwhelming, that it tends to crowd out how you might have imagined things. — Yann Martel

Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you. — Yann Martel

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

If you don't let technology help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaurhood. — Yann Martel

I am not a particularly natural writer. I am not a person who can write in paragraphs the way some writers do. For me, it's sentence by sentence, sometimes word-by-word. And I revise constantly. It's a very laborious process, but I love doing it. — Yann Martel

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

We believe what we see.’...What do you do when you’re in the dark? — Yann Martel

I felt I was beating a rainbow to death — Yann Martel

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

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. — Yann Martel

Words are much better at relating emotions and thoughts. — Yann Martel

Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense. — Yann Martel

To my mind, faith is like being in the sun. When you are in the sun, can you avoid creating a shadow? Can you shake that area of darkness that clings to you, always shaped like you, as if constantly to remind you of yourself? You can’t. This shadow is doubt. And it goes wherever you go as long as you stay in the sun. And who wouldn’t want to be in the sun? — Yann Martel

It was a huge zoo, spread over numberless acres, big enough to require a train to explore it, though it seemed to get smaler as I grew older, train included. Now it's so small it fits in my head. — Yann Martel

Life Lessons by Yann Martel

1. Yann Martel's work emphasizes the importance of resilience and hope in the face of adversity. He shows that even in the darkest of times, it is possible to find joy, beauty, and meaning in life.
2. Martel's writing also encourages us to look beyond our own perspectives and to embrace the diversity of the world around us. He emphasizes the importance of learning from those who are different from us, and of understanding and appreciating the unique experiences of others.
3. Finally, Martel's work reminds us that it is possible to find hope and meaning in life, even when faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. He encourages us to stay strong and to never give up, no matter how difficult the situation may be.