Top 400 Yann Martel Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 7 of 9

301. “I tell you, to be drunk on alcohol is disgraceful, but to be drunk on water is noble and ecstatic.”

— Yann Martel

302. “She heard “Hairless Christians”, and that is what they were to her for many years. When I corrected her, I told her that in fact she was not so wrong; that 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.”

— Yann Martel

303. “An intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presence and of ultimate purpose.”

— Yann Martel

304. “In my experience, a castaways’s worst mistake is to hope too much and 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

305. “Reason is my prophet and it tells me that as a watch stops, so we die. It’s the end.”

— Yann Martel

306. “Time became distance for me in the way it is for all mortals.”

— Yann Martel

307. “We must do the same with death in our lives: resolve it, give it meaning, put it into context, however hard that might be.”

— Yann Martel

308. “It’s the sun that makes a landscape, drawing out its color, defining its contours, giving it its spirit.”

— Yann Martel

309. “That’s what fiction is about, isn’t it, the selective transforming of reality?”

— Yann Martel

310. “What I had before me was a spectacle of wind and water, an earthquake of the senses, that even Hollywood couldn’t orchestrate.”

— Yann Martel

311. “Some of us give up on life with only a resigned sigh. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others- and I am one of those-never give up. We fight and fight and fight. We fight no matter what the cost of battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the very end. It’s not a question of courage. It’s... an inability to let go. It may be nothing more than life hungry stupidity.”

— Yann Martel

312. “You speak with warm marbles in your mouth. You have an Indian accent.”

— Yann Martel

313. “It’s a joke in the zoo business, a weary joke, that the paperwork involved in trading a shrew weighs more than an elephant, that the paperwork involved in trading an elephant weighs more than a whale, and that you must never try to trade a whale, never.”

— Yann Martel

314. “Once you’ve been struck by violence, you acquire companions that never leave you entirely: Suspicion, Fear, Anxiety, Despair, Joylessness.”

— Yann Martel

315. “These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, “Business as usual.” But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.”

— Yann Martel

316. “No greatness without goodness.”

— Yann Martel

317. “Long-term, bad politics is bad for business.”

— Yann Martel

318. “On a day when I estimated it was my mothers birthday, I sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her out loud.”

— Yann Martel

319. “If a man, boldest and most intelligent of creatures, won’t wander from place to place, a stranger to all, beholden to none, why would an animal, which is by temperament far more conservative?”

— Yann Martel

320. “Bapu Ghandi said, “All religions are true.” I just want to love God,” I blurted out, and looked down, red in the face.”

— Yann Martel

321. “The sun was beginning to pull the curtains on the day.”

— Yann Martel

322. “There are no grounds for going beyond a scientific explanation of reality and no sound reason for believing anything but our sense experience. A clear intellect, close attention to detail and a little scientific knowledge will expose religion as superstitious bosh. God does not exist.”

— Yann Martel

323. “If it happened, it happened. Why should it have to mean anything?”

— Yann Martel

324. “Change becomes a habit and habits are hard to change .”

— Yann Martel

325. “Oncoming death is terrible enough, but worse still is oncoming death with time to spare, time in which all the happiness that was yours and all the happiness that might have been yours becomes clear to you. You see with utter lucidity all that you are losing. The sight brings on an oppressive sadness that no car about to hit you or water about to drown you can match. The feeling is truly unbearable.”

— Yann Martel

326. “His presence was overwhelming, yet equally evident was the lithesome grace of it.”

— Yann Martel

327. “I’ve never forgotten him. 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. I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. The pain is like an axe that chops my heart.”

— Yann Martel

328. “It is the irony of this story that the one who scared me witless to start with was the very same who brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even wholeness.”

— Yann Martel

329. “They were like curmudgeonly old friends who would never admit that they liked me yet came round to see me all the time. The.”

— Yann Martel

330. “I sang that tree’s glory, its solid, unhurried purity, its slow beauty. Oh, that I could be like it, rooted to the ground but with my every hand raised up to God in praise!”

— Yann Martel

331. “I underestimated her. I under-estimated her grit. She.”

— Yann Martel

332. “If Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, one day favours me bountifully, Oxford is fifth on the list of cities I would like to visit before I pass on, after Mecca, Varanasi, Jerusalem and Paris.”

— Yann Martel

333. “Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defence, not God’s, that the self-righteous should rush.”

— Yann Martel

334. “The guttural eruptions and long flowing vowels rolled just beneath my comprehension like a beautiful brook. I gazed into this brook for long spells of time. It was not wide, just one man’s voice, but it was as deep as the universe.”

— Yann Martel

335. “Thus set up, pen in hand, for the sake of greater truth, I would turn Portugal into a fiction. That’s what fiction is about, isn’t it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence? What need did I have to go to Portugal? The.”

— Yann Martel

336. “In the wild, animals stick to the same paths for the same pressing reasons, season after season.”

— Yann Martel

337. “I gave up trying to find out. Any knowledge I might gain was useless. I had no means of controlling where I was going – no rudder, no sails, no motor, some oars, but insufficient brawn.”

— Yann Martel

338. “That is Christianity at heart: a single miracle surrounded and sustained by stories, like an island surrounded by the sea.”

— Yann Martel

339. “Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they’ve known for a great unknown beyond the horizon? Why climb this Mount Everest of formalities that makes you feel like a beggar? Why enter this jungle of foreignness where everything is new, strange and difficult? The answer is the same the world over: people move in hope of a better life.”

— Yann Martel

340. “I just want to love God.”

— Yann Martel

341. “If you went to a home, kicked down the front door, chased the people who lived there out into the street and said, “Go! You are free! Free as a bird! Go! Go!” – do you think they would shout and dance for joy? They wouldn’t. Birds are not free. The people you’ve.”

— Yann Martel

342. “When Mr. Kumar visited the zoo, it was to take the pulse of the universe, and his stethoscopic mind always confirmed to him that everything was in order, that everything was order.”

— Yann Martel

343. “Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low.”

— Yann Martel

344. “It would no longer be the small thing it was before, but the most important thing in the world, the thing that would save my life. This happened time and again.”

— Yann Martel

345. “It felt good to bring my forehead to the ground. Immediately it felt like a deeply religious contact.”

— Yann Martel

346. “My fingers, which a second before had been taste buds savouring the food a little ahead of my mouth, became dirty under his gaze.”

— Yann Martel

347. “His father had been his sole supporter, telling him to live for his love for Dora, in precise opposition to his uncle’s silent opprobrium. Dora was relegated to invisible duties deep within the kitchen. Gaspar lived equally invisibly in the Lobo household, invisibly loved by his father, who invisibly loved his mother.”

— Yann Martel

348. “Her fear was something useless that only hampered her.”

— Yann Martel

349. “It’s a big ocean crossed by busy ships. I went slowly, observing much.”

— Yann Martel

350. “The moon distresses you by silently reminding you of your solitude; you open your eyes wide to escape your loneliness.”

— Yann Martel