Yann Martel Quotes
Stories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.

Quotes to Explore
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I like the way hip-hop is now. It's grown up enough so that it can get involved with politics if it feels like it.
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The irony is that Washington was, in reality, very much like Benedict Arnold. The big difference was that Washington was ultimately able to control his emotions, something Arnold never learned to do.
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They think my life is glamourous. It's not true. I obviously get to come in and do radio interviews. That's the glamour. But other than that, I eat and sleep and that's it. Eat, sleep and do shows.
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I think you have to keep a childlike quality to play music or make a record.
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Feminism is dead. The movement is absolutely dead. The women's movement tried to suppress dissident voices for way too long. There's no room for dissent.
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The lesson of 'CSI' is: No matter what horrible things happen, nice policemen will turn up and fix everything and return it to the status quo.
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There's a whole element of human interaction and character interaction that I really enjoy doing.
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How do you make it to the top when all you have is ambition and talent? You believe in yourself and surround yourself with other idealistic and talented friends that fuel each other and push against the establishment to take you seriously.
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I started wearing all black around the time I got into Nirvana. I first heard 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' when I was about 12, and I remember jumping on my bed, so excited about it.
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Shakespeare's villains are fabulous because none of them know that they are villains. Well, sometimes they do.
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Excellence is not a skill, it's an attitude.
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With all the great products that are apparently out there that are undetectable, for me to take something like that... when people take things that now aren't even being tested for, does it make any sense?
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I suspect that many of the great cultural shifts that prepare the way for political change are largely aesthetic. A Buick radiator grille is as much a political statement as a Rolls Royce radiator grille, one enshrining a machine aesthetic driven by a populist optimism, the other enshrining a hierarchical and exclusive social order.
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I let characters be human and flawed and relatable. When we do things that aren't that great, we can understand it.
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Son, give 'em a good show, and always travel first class.
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We shot 'Telusa Telusa' song in Bolivia. It took us 50 hours to get to the location. We shot in high altitudes, and oxygen cylinders were kept handy.
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Lipgloss is my calling!
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To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
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Travelling to make television programmes means I have some unusual food memories. In Pasto, Colombia, I was taken to a restaurant where I chose my meat for the evening from a cage of white rats. It tasted perfectly good - like rabbit.
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I'll have ideas in my head of what I want to say, but I need a beat to inspire me. So I would just say something as simple as, "Can you try something at 103 BPM with a reversed hi-hat and use an electric piano?" And then it just grows from that.
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I think a lot of what I was taught, gathered, and learned is worth keeping. Heritage and 'wisdom' and simply personal family and local history enrich the one able to tap such information. As it is I wish I had garnered more from my grandparents and parents.
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My family didn't have money, and I think it made me fearless. I'm willing to try everything and not be afraid because what's the worst that can be happen? It might not work out, but I can't be worse off than when I was a kid.
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Every family has that secret. Every family has that thing where you go, 'Shhh, shhh, shhh.'
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Stories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.