Yann Martel

I think art comes from some sense of discomfort with the world, some sense of not quite fitting with it.

Words aren't very good at describing complicated, strange visual things. You can try, and the reader will have some sort of image in their mind, but words aren't good at that.

If I didn't have children, I think my life would be a failure.

I write slowly.

Most of us get our history through story.

Every book I've written has been a different attempt to understand something, and the success or failure of the previous one is irrelevant. I write the book I want.

If a film project were available and the timing was right, I might be interested.

'Life of Pi' was actually a very simple novel to write.

I'm looking at a dead event and trying to give it new life. In a sense, I'm a taxidermist.

The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.

Words are much better at relating emotions and thoughts.

I can't live for more than four years outside of Canada. I'm Canadian, so ultimately that is my reference point.

How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer, but art is very self-referential, whereas religion claims to go beyond the bounds of human existence.

I'm still learning my craft.

I am not an autobiographical writer.

I like using animals because they help suspend my reader's disbelief. We have certain ideas about dentists. We don't have many ideas about rhinoceros dentists.

If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.

A great literary work can be completely, completely unpredictable. Which can sometimes make them very hard to read, but it gives them a great originality.

Any writer will be happy and good only if they know what they're doing and why they're doing it.

You can't quantify human pain the way you can measure out sugar. Death comes one individual at a time.

I love Canada. It's a wonderful political act of faith that exists atop a breathtakingly beautiful land.

The moral of a fable is eternal. The moral of a story is temporary to a story.

Books are something social - a writer speaking to a reader - so I think making the reading of a book the center of a social event, the meeting of a book club, is a brilliant idea.

Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction.

I'm happy pretty well anywhere on this big, beautiful planet.