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
I am reminded of a story of Lord Krishna when he was a cowherd. Every night he invites the milkmaids to dance with him in the forest. They come and they dance. The night is dark, the fire in their midst roars and crackles, the beat of the music gets ever faster - the girls dance and dance and dance with their sweet lord, who has made himself so abundant as to be in the arms of each and every girl. But the moment the girls become possessive, the moment each one imagines that Krishna is her partner alone, he vanishes. So it is that we should not be jealous of God.
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...
It's true, too, that I'm tired of using books as political bullets and grenades. Books are too precious and wonderful to be used for long in such a fashion.
You can't quantify human pain the way you can measure out sugar. Death comes one individual at a time.
If I didn't have children, I think my life would be a failure.
I'm happy pretty well anywhere on this big, beautiful planet.
A movie is so visually powerful, so overwhelming, that it tends to crowd out how you might have imagined things.
Words aren't very good at describing complicated, strange visual things. You can try, and the reader will have some sort of image in their mind, but words aren't good at that.
Cinema is visually powerful, it is a complete experience, reaches a different audience. It's something I really like. I like movies.
In all big cities the style of life is the same. Same endless array of restaurants; same big museums with the usual suspects; same anonymity, which can be thrilling when you're young but which I found got tiresome.
If a film project were available and the timing was right, I might be interested.
'Life of Pi' was actually a very simple novel to write.
I love Canada. It's a wonderful political act of faith that exists atop a breathtakingly beautiful land.
I'm looking at a dead event and trying to give it new life. In a sense, I'm a taxidermist.