Top 400 Yann Martel Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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

Featured in: Letting Go Quotes, Hurt Quotes, Goodbye Quotes

2. “You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.”

— Yann Martel

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

— Yann Martel

4. “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.”

— Yann Martel

5. “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

6. “I have a story that will make you believe in God.”

— Yann Martel

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

7. “Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud...”

— Yann Martel

8. “How long does it take for a broken spirit to kill a body that has food, water and shelter?”

— Yann Martel

Featured in: Quotes About Water

9. “It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.”

— Yann Martel

10. “When you’ve suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.”

— Yann Martel

11. “I can only tell my story, what you believe is up to you.”

— Yann Martel

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

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

— Yann Martel

Featured in: Challenges Quotes

13. “If you don’t have dreams, how do you maneuver reality? Where do you get the ideas to change reality if not from dreams?”

— Yann Martel

14. “I love Canada. Its a wonderful political act of faith that exists atop a breathtakingly beautiful land.”

— Yann Martel

15. “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

Featured in: Moving Forward Quotes

16. “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

17. “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

18. “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

19. “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

20. “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

21. “Afterwards, when it’s all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?”

— Yann Martel

22. “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.”

— Yann Martel

23. “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

24. “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.”

— Yann Martel

25. “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

26. “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

27. “I love cinema. I think the risk of the aesthetics being fixed is compensated by other advantages. Cinema is visually powerful, it is a complete experience, reaches different audience. It’s something I really like. I like movies.”

— Yann Martel

28. “The animals might embody certain traits. We think of tigers as being ferocious, etc. But to my mind, it was the other way around: the humans embodied certain animal traits.”

— Yann Martel

29. “Bapu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God.”

— Yann Martel

30. “To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity.”

— Yann Martel

31. “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

32. “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

33. “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

34. “He’s a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.”

— Yann Martel

35. “The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity – it’s envy.”

— Yann Martel

36. “Life is an interpretation of a series of facts, and that interpretation is really what life is about. So the division between non-fiction and fiction has a certain logic, but it’s a very limited one. And by and large, it isn’t helpful.”

— Yann Martel

37. “Fanatics do not have faith – they have belief. With faith you let go. You trust. Whereas with belief you cling.”

— Yann Martel

38. “As much as I love movies, it would be presumptuous of me to think that I know how to make one.”

— Yann Martel

39. “As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound.”

— Yann Martel

40. “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

Featured in: Country Quotes

41. “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

42. “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

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

43. “Don’t you bully me with your politeness!”

— Yann Martel

44. “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

Featured in: Book Quotes

45. “The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar.”

— Yann Martel

46. “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

47. “Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life.”

— Yann Martel

48. “Words are much better at relating emotions and thoughts.”

— Yann Martel

49. “Books, like people, can’t be reduced to the cost of the materials with which they were made. Books, like people, become unique and precious once you get to know them.”

— Yann Martel

Featured in: Book Quotes

50. “My gratitude to him is as boundless as the Pacific ocean.”

— Yann Martel