You can't quantify human pain the way you can measure out sugar. Death comes one individual at a time.
Yann MartelRead
I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques the desire for simplistic narratives that ignore deeper truths and complexities.
Yann Martel's quote underscores a fundamental dissatisfaction with stories that merely affirm our existing beliefs without challenging or expanding our perspectives. It suggests that instead of seeking out narratives that offer comfort through familiarity, we should embrace stories that provoke thought, spark curiosity, and push us to explore beyond our current understanding of reality. The essence of storytelling, as invited by Martel, lies in its power to inspire transformation and broaden horizons.
Themes
StoryTruthPerspectiveNarrativeUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
In a book club discussion on narrative techniques, this quote can highlight the importance of challenging conventional storytelling.
More from Yann Martel
All quotes βCome aboard if your destination is oblivion- it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat if you want. But it's a sad view.
Yann MartelRead
Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths.
Yann MartelRead
The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.
Yann MartelRead
I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.
Yann MartelRead
Art is a gift: you create and then you give away. How readers receive that gift is their business. If they hate it, thatβs their response to it. Others respond by liking it. Either way, that is their interaction with the book, which is no longer mine.
Yann MartelRead
Similar quotes
First, if it is true that a spatial order organizes an ensemble of possibilities (e.g., by a place in which one can move) and interdictions (e.g., by a wall that prevents one from going further), than the walked actualizes some of these possibilities. In that way, he makes them exist as well as emerge. But he also moves them about and he invents others, since the crossing, drifting away, or improvisation of walking privilege, transform, or abandon spatial elements.
Michel De CerteauRead
Leave greatness to others. Become so small that no one can see you. This conviction results from growing devotion to the supreme reality.
Sri Nisargadatta MaharajRead
Those who shun the whimsy of things will experience rigor mortis before death.
Tom RobbinsRead
Truth is a tyrant-the only tyrant to whom we can give our allegiance. The service of truth is a matter of heroism.
John F. KennedyRead
Choice not chance determines your destiny [my family motto...credited to Aristotle]
AristotleRead
And so it is they who, between them, give me all the reasons for believing in none.
Salman RushdieRead