Top 400 Yann Martel Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

303. “Buku yang bisa ku baca berulang-ulang, dengan sudut pandang baru dan pengertian baru setiap kalinya.”

— Yann Martel

304. “Be daunted, but not defeated.”

— Yann Martel

305. “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

306. “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

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

— Yann Martel

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

— Yann Martel

309. “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 to 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.”

— Yann Martel

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

— Yann Martel

311. “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

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

— Yann Martel

313. “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

314. “So I flew to Bombay. This is not so illogical if you realize three things: that a stint in India will beat the restlessness out of any living creature; that a little money can go a long way there; and that a novel set in Portugal in 1939 may have very little to do with Portugal in 1939. I.”

— Yann Martel

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

— Yann Martel

316. “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

317. “No greatness without goodness.”

— Yann Martel

318. “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

319. “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

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

— Yann Martel

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

— Yann Martel

322. “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

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

— Yann Martel

324. “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

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

— Yann Martel

326. “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

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

— Yann Martel

328. “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

329. “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

330. “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

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

— Yann Martel

332. “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

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

— Yann Martel

334. “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

335. “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

336. “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

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

— Yann Martel

338. “These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. 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

339. “Things floated in the water but none that brought me hope. I could see no other lifeboats.”

— Yann Martel

340. “I would return home to la maison, feminine where, as likely as not, I would go to my room, la chambre, where I would settle to read un livre masculine, until supper. During the masculine meal, feminine food would be eaten. After my hard, productive masculine day, I would rest during the feminine night. At one time, for a few days, I even took an affected aversion to being in the kitchen, la cuisine.”

— Yann Martel

341. “The stars shone with such fears, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.”

— Yann Martel

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

— Yann Martel

343. “Within the limits of their nature, they make do with what they have.”

— Yann Martel

344. “I just want to love God.”

— Yann Martel

345. “He smiled. “You already are, Piscine – in your heart. Whoever meets Christ in good faith is a Christian. Here in Munnar you met Christ.”

— Yann Martel

346. “We are random animals. That is who we are, and we have only ourselves, nothing more-there is no greater relationship. Long before Darwin, a priest lucid in his madness encountered four chimpanzees on a forlorn island in Africa and hit upon a great truth: We are risen apes, not fallen angels.”

— Yann Martel

347. “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

348. “I’ll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”

— Yann Martel

349. “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

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

— Yann Martel