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 More Quotes by Yann Martel More Quotes From Yann Martel For fear, real fear such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you. Yann Martel real fear memories I had to stop hoping so much that a ship would rescue me. I should not count on outside help. Survival had to start with me. In my experience, a castaway’s worst mistake is to hope too much and to do too little. 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 dream mistake hands 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 dawn darkness rain You can get used to anything - haven't I already said that? Isn't that what all survivors say? Yann Martel survivor used said We believe what we see.’...What do you do when you’re in the dark? Yann Martel dark believe 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 understanding life travel You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did. And as a result I perked up and felt much better. Yann Martel hope might thinking 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 eye long book It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Yann Martel life-of-pi-book important letting-go You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it. Yann Martel cheer-up inspiring graduation Any writer will be happy and good only if they know what they're doing and why they're doing it. Yann Martel ifs knows 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 our-actions karma way We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man. Yann Martel animal zoos men 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 painting noise stories My gratitude to him is as boundless as the Pacific ocean. Yann Martel gratitude grateful ocean 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 brother mother sorry Mockery be damned, my urine looked delicious. Yann Martel mockery delicious 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 answers mind bird Colonialism is a terrible bane for a people upon whom it is imposed, but a blessing for a language. English's drive to exploit the new and the alien, its zeal in robbing words from other languages, its incapacity to feel qualms over the matter, its museum-size overabundance of vocabulary, it shoulder-shrug approach to spelling, its don't-worry-be-happy concern for grammar-the result was a language whose colour and wealth Henry loved. Yann Martel qualms-about blessing love If literature does one thing, it makes you more empathetic by making you live other lives and feel the pain of others. Ideologues don't feel the pain of others because they haven't imaginatively got under their skins. Yann Martel empathy pain skins
