Quotes from Yann Martel

Music moves me - duh - and that is like having a window opening on a heightened reality, but the effect is fleeting: When the music ends, the magic, the uplifting, vanishes and the window slams shut. Words, on the other hand, by the nature of how they work, emotions evoked by dint of carefully laid out thoughts, have a more lingering effect.

What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell.

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.

Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them -- and then they leap.

I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful.

Art is the suitcase of history, carrying the essentials. Art is the life buoy of history. Art is seed, art is memory, art is vaccine.

Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body. It is from there that both babies and cancers are born.

Blessed be shock. Blessed be the part of us that protects us from too much pain and sorrow. At the heart of life is a fusebox.

He's a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.

You may not believe in life, but I don't believe in death. Move on!

Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.

Words are much better at relating emotions and thoughts.

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

If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.

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?

Time is an illusion that makes us all pant.

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.

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.

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

It's true, too, that I'm tired of using books as political bullets and grenades. Books are too precious and wonderful to be used for long in such a fashion.

Christianity stretches back through the ages, but in essence it exists only at one time: right now.

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.

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

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