A story is a wedding in which we listeners are the groom watching the bride coming up the aisle. It is together, in an act of imaginary consummation, that the story is born. This act wholly involves us, as any marriage would, and just as no marriage is exactly the same as another, so each of us interprets a story differently, feels for it differently.

— Yann Martel

A story is a wedding in which we listeners are the groom watching the bride coming up the aisle. It is together, in an act of imaginary consummation, that the story is born. This act wholly involves us, as any marriage would, and just as no marriage is exactly the same as another, so each of us interprets a story differently, feels for it differently. A story calls upon us...as individuals-and we like that. Stories benefit the human mind.

— Yann Martel

Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them -- and then they leap.

— Yann Martel

At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far.

— Yann Martel

Books, like people, can't be reduced to the cost of the materials with which they were made. Books, like people, become unique and precious once you get to know them.

— Yann Martel

But it was hard, oh, it was hard. Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love--but sometimes it was so hard to love. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation, and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up.

— Yann Martel

Christianity is a religion in a rush.

— Yann Martel

Come aboard if your destination is oblivion - it should be our next stop.

— Yann Martel

Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. Furthermore, I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. That pain is like an axe that chops at my heart.

— Yann Martel

Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression.

— Yann Martel