“I don't know then. I wrote my book on the Holocaust without worrying about where the fucking bar code would go.” — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“From Matheran I mailed the notes of my failed novel. I mailed them to fictitious address.” — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that. — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction. — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
I like using animals because they help suspend my reader's disbelief. We have certain ideas about dentists. We don't have many ideas… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
Books, like people, can't be reduced to the cost of the materials with which they were made. Books, like people, become unique… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
Books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play baseball or soccer, and mine was the gangly,… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
Books are something social - a writer speaking to a reader - so I think making the reading of a book the… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
My next book - each one while I'm working on it - dances in my mind and thrills me at every turn.… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
The language of prose is very different than the language of cinema, so the movie has to successfully translate what was in… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“Readers will easily recognize the cover of a book they've read, but in a cafe that man over there, is that...is that...well,… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
My greatest wish — other than salvation — was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One I… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
What works in a story is very different than what works in cinema. For example, dialogue in books: If you translate it… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“I can't understand how a man who seems never to read imaginative writing of any kind (novels, poetry, short stories, high-brow, middle-brow,… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“You might have noticed that I have been sending you used books. I have done this not to save money, but to… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“Henry had written a novel because there was a hole in him that needed filling, a question that needed answering, a patch… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“... and I knew what I wanted: I would settle in a hill station and write my novel. I had visions of… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
In a movie, you need good actors, whereas in a book, you don't, unless you have a really bad imagination. In a… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
Art is a gift: you create and then you give away. How readers receive that gift is their business. If they hate… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
Every book I've written has been a different attempt to understand something, and the success or failure of the previous one is… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
If literature does one thing, it makes you more empathetic by making you live other lives and feel the pain of others.… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
It's true, too, that I'm tired of using books as political bullets and grenades. Books are too precious and wonderful to be… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“It’s a big ocean crossed by busy ships. I went slowly, observing much.” — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“The word isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it,… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“Remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left.” — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“I must say a word about fear. It's is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary,… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves,… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
High calls low and low calls high. I tell you, if you were in such dire straits as I was, you too would elevate… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“Or rather, since Christians are so fond of capital letters, a Story.” — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“Progress is unstoppable. It is a drumbeat to which we must all march. Technology helps and good ideas spread - these are two laws… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence were… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“I never had problems with my fellow scientists. Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
“For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
Books are something social - a writer speaking to a reader - so I think making the reading of a book the center of… — Yann Martel Copy Share Image
