Yann Martel Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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It was really in the Golden Age, between the two world wars, when the pure detective story - of which the locked room mystery is really the ultimate form - became popular.
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It was all about flying round the world, working hard, being on the cover of Vogue, making money. It wasn't fun. It was exhausting, but I was young and convinced I knew best.
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I never set out to become 'famous.' I mean, when you're 14 you think 'I'm gonna become a writer and people will want my autograph and that'll be cool,' but you grow up and you learn that's just not how the world works. I resigned myself to the fact that I would probably never be published and if I did it probably wouldn't be a big deal.
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The number of children is not growing any longer in the world. We are still debating peak oil, but we have definitely reached peak child.
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My time at Shell was a most valuable experience because it taught me to look at the world in a long-term way. Shell takes a 20-year view on events and plans for different scenarios. It makes you see the world as a kind of large matrix.
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I think there are telegrams that may or may not be available, which indicated that I very much had in mind the need to give Europe substantial aid after the war, after Lend-Lease was over.
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Almost half of the population of the world lives in rural regions and mostly in a state of poverty. Such inequalities in human development have been one of the primary reasons for unrest and, in some parts of the world, even violence.
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The process of discovery in my field is very incremental. But there are moments when you realize you know something about the world nobody else knows. That's extraordinarily exhilarating.
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Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.
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If you think about work, it's just this endlessly fascinating subject. We spend at least half of our waking hours working. So it becomes this incredible window into a whole variety of things: who we are human beings, how the economy works, how people relate to each other, how stuff is made, how the world spins on its axis.
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I have two daughters: One an open book, one a locked box. So the question of privacy is a challenging one. How much do kids need? How much should we give? How do we prepare them to live in a world where the very notion of privacy opens a generational chasm?
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Most seem to think that while a person may not be responsible for the opportunities he gets in life, each is entirely responsible for what he makes of these opportunities.
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When you're devoted to a greater freedom in the world, you're willing to compromise something you love.
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I believe that in this world it is impossible to understand God.
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Rarely has a new player on the world stage captured so much attention so quickly - young and old, faithful and cynical - as has Pope Francis.
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With the world changing fast, we needed capital for investments. There's only so much bandwidth in your own balance sheet.
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Barack Obama has talked a lot about changing the way America relates to the world, and few areas are as ripe for reform as our policies on foreign aid.
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The world is changing and the physical barriers are down now. It's time for the emotional barriers to go down. And what better place to start than school?
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The 2008 Olympics has created an illusion of China to the public and to the outside world. It is so fantastic, so unreal, that the entire meaning of the games is being distorted.
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No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.
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You take jobs so much of the time when you don't need to necessarily work for a living, but it becomes important who you are going to work with.
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Gollum was so interesting to me because he's morally ambivalent, and I love the notion of a quest that is to lose something. Not to gain, but to get rid of something.
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You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.
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May books spread the world over!
