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 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.
Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed.
The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving.
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.