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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A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done.
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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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The more you are getting older, you lose a little something. Of course there is another advantage, because of your long experience you can use it.
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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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Someone tried to save my soul in a gas station.
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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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On the back benches, you can have your say but no power to do anything.
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The French are pretty thin-skinned. The few times I mentioned a French writer in 'City Boy,' the relatives would ring up in high dudgeon. I once wrote a mocking review of Marguerite Duras in the 'New York Review of Books,' and good friends of mine in France got very angry.
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No offense to music - thank you for Entertainer of the Year and all that stuff. But if you're a father or a mother, there's nothing that beats being a parent, and that's the best time of my life right there.
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My mom was a single mother in the South Bronx living in adverse conditions. Seeing her struggles to get herself off of welfare and get back into the workplace and give me and my sister a better life - it's an inspiration for me.
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Quiet the mind and the soul will speak.
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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.
