Yann Martel Quotes
I wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain. I was sixteen years old, a harmless boy, bookish and religious, and now I had blood on my hands. It's a terrible burden to carry. All sentient life is sacred.
Quotes to Explore
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God doesn't want us to merely sit around dreaming about things we can do and be. That's a good place to start, but a poor place to stop. God wants us to turn our dreams into action.
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In our culture, the shame about accidental pregnancy is inextricable from the shame about having had sex. That disapproval of sex is one reason our record with contraception is so poor. If you're not supposed to be sexual, you don't plan for sex. You cross your fingers and hope for the best.
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Every teenager and everybody around the ages from 10 to 18 has to go through finding out who they are.
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We see book-burning as a crime against humanity: it's intolerable because books represent a kind of freedom to us.
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We may define therapy as a search for value.
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President Bush's emergency declaration for the State of Texas is great news for the people and communities that have experienced the devastating wildfires firsthand. Already, communities have rallied to help neighbors in need.
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In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75.
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All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.
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I played Woodstock in '69, and it really changed my life. Without a doubt, it was the single event that really changed the way I felt about music. Up to that point, I hadn't really thought of myself as more serious musician, and I didn't really have that much interest in pop music.
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I find the presence of the sea quite inspiring, and sometimes I do just get out and walk around and take in the sea breeze to try and clear my mind.
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Usually I like to have them, but going drum-less pushes everything in a new direction and makes it easier to keep things sounding different.
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Revision has its own peculiar pleasures and its own peculiar frustrations. The ground rules are already established; the characters already exist. You don't have to bring the characters to life, but you do have to make them more convincing.
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A sentence that clots in your mouth is unlikely to flow in your mind.
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There can be a lot of mind games going on between the players. When you're about to serve, people will try to throw you off your rhythm by taking a walk. If you're tired, you can't show that at all to an opponent.
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An English journalist called Michael Viney told me when I was 25, that I would write well if I cared a lot what I was writing about. That worked. I went home that day and wrote about parents not understanding their children as well as we teachers did, and it was published the very next week.
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I think we are intrinsically prone to being irrational and superstitious. A lot of it comes from our fear of the unknown and the fear of a lack of control over our fate.
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I am not hungry for roles on TV or in films. I am happy being a social media sensation.
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People think I am funny all the time. But I am not. I am serious, too. Also, I enjoy serious, dramatic films.
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κρεῖσσον γὰρ εἰσάπαξ θανεῖνἢ τὰς ἁπάσας ἡμέρας πάσχειν κακῶς.
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If you want creativity, take a zero off your budget. If you want sustainability, take off two zeros.
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Achievements are precious and timeless, just like the precious metal platinum. And what better way to celebrate milestones in your life than with precious platinum.
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Emotion consists of a very well orchestrated set of alterations in the body that has, as a general purpose, making life more survivable by taking care of a danger, of taking care of an opportunity, either/or, or something in between.
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I still cannot fathom how difficult it was for the women I met to find out that they were HIV-positive. It is such a courageous undertaking in countries where there is still considerable stigma about the disease. They got tested to ensure that their unborn babies would have a chance of life by being born free of the virus.
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I wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain. I was sixteen years old, a harmless boy, bookish and religious, and now I had blood on my hands. It's a terrible burden to carry. All sentient life is sacred.
