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Yann Martel Quotes

born 1963 Canada

Yann Martel (born June 25, 1963) is a Canadian author most famous for his Man Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi.

Canada
Novelists

Also known as: Martell, Yann, Yann Martell, Beatrice & Virgil, Life of Pi, The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Random Yann Martel quote

28 quotes

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

Life of Pi (2001)

Colonialism is a terrible bane for a people upon whom it is imposed, but a blessing for a language.

Beatrice & Virgil (2010)

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

Life of Pi (2001)

To my mind, faith is like being in the sun. When you are in the sun, can you avoid creating a shadow?

Beatrice & Virgil (2010)

When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.

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

Beatrice & Virgil (2010)

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.

Life of Pi (2001)

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.

Life of Pi (2001)

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

Life of Pi (2001)

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

Life of Pi (2001)

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

Life of Pi (2001)

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 of Pi (2001)

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.

Life of Pi (2001)

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

Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims.

Life of Pi (2001)

I applied my reason at every moment. Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.

Life of Pi (2001)

My suffering left me sad and gloomy.

Life of Pi (2001)

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.

Life of Pi (2001)

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.

Life of Pi (2001)

Don't you bully me with your politeness! 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?

Life of Pi (2001)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Yann Martel (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.