Yann Martel Quotes

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Yann Martel

Profession : Author

Birth : June 25, 1963

A movie will do in one second, with one image, what it will take a novelist at least a page to describe.

Yann Martel

Words are much better at relating emotions and thoughts.

Yann Martel

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.

Yann Martel

I write slowly.

Yann Martel

Most of us get our history through story.

Yann Martel

If a film project were available and the timing was right, I might be interested.

Yann Martel

'Life of Pi' was actually a very simple novel to write.

Yann Martel

I'm looking at a dead event and trying to give it new life. In a sense, I'm a taxidermist.

Yann Martel

The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.

Yann Martel

I'm happy pretty well anywhere on this big, beautiful planet.

Yann Martel

I can't live for more than four years outside of Canada. I'm Canadian, so ultimately that is my reference point.

Yann Martel

How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer, but art is very self-referential, whereas religion claims to go beyond the bounds of human existence.

Yann Martel

I'm still learning my craft.

Yann Martel

I am not an autobiographical writer.

Yann Martel

If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.

Yann Martel

A great literary work can be completely, completely unpredictable. Which can sometimes make them very hard to read, but it gives them a great originality.

Yann Martel

Any writer will be happy and good only if they know what they're doing and why they're doing it.

Yann Martel