Yann Martel
Yann Martel
Yann Martelis a Spanish-born Canadian author best known for the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi, a #1 international bestseller published in more than 50 territories. It has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and spent more than a year on the Bestseller Lists of the New York Times and The Globe and Mail, among many other bestseller lists. It was adapted to the screen and directed by Ang Lee, garnering four Oscarsincluding Best Director and won the...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 June 1963
CitySalamanca, Spain
CountryCanada
Don’t worry about being good…. Aspire to be authentic.
Was it the forgetfulness of old age or personal incapacity that made the man able to say please but not thank you?
I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.
If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?
If you are pitched into misery, remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left.
A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real.
I can well imagine an athiest's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!" - and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.
In my youth, it was my good luck to have a few good teachers, men and women, who came into my head and lit a match.
Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life.
I couldn't get Him out of my head. Still can't. I spent three solid days thinking about Him. The more He bothered me, the less I coul forget Him. And the more I learned about Him, the less I wanted to leave Him.
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.
Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love.
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?
A movie will do in one second, with one image, what it will take a novelist at least a page to describe.