Beatrice and Virgil Quotes

“Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Don’t worry about being good…. Aspire to be authentic.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“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.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“If you are pitched into misery, remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“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 Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“To my mind, faith is like being in the sun. When you are in the sun, can you avoid creating a shadow? Can you shake that area of darkness that clings to you, always shaped like you, as if constantly to remind you of yourself? You can’t. This shadow is doubt. And it goes wherever you go as long as you stay in the sun. And who wouldn’t want to be in the sun?”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Afterwards, when it's all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Art is the suitcase of history, carrying the essentials. Art is the life buoy of history. Art is seed, art is memory, art is vaccine.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field-but they're all we have.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Was it the forgetfulness of old age or personal incapacity that made the man able to say please but not thank you?”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“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. As for nonfiction, for history, it may be real, but its truth is slippery, hard to access, with no fixed meaning bolted to it. If history doesn't become story, it dies to everyone except the historian.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body. It is from there that both babies and cancers are born.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“As for fame, fame felt like nothing. Fame was not a sensation like love or hunger or loneliness, welling from within and invisible to the outside eye. It was rather entirely external, coming from the minds of others. It existed in the way people looked at him or behaved towards him. In that, being famous was no different from being gay, or Jewish, or from a visible minority: you are who you are, and then people project onto you some notion they have.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“In a healthy individual, a broken bone that has healed properly is strongest where it was once broken. You have not lost any life, Henry told himself. You will still get your fair share of years. Yet the quality of his life changed. Once you've been struck by violence, you acquire companions that never leave you entirely: Suspicion, Fear, Anxiety, Despair, Joylessness. The natural smile is taken from you and the natural pleasures you once enjoyed lose their appeal.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“In his entirely personal experience of them, English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was from the streets. Which is to stay, stab his heart and it would bleed French, slice his brain open and its convolutions would be lined with English and German, and touch his hands and they would feel Spanish.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Colonialism is a terrible bane for a people upon whom it is imposed, but a blessing for a language. English's drive to exploit the new and the alien, its zeal in robbing words from other languages, its incapacity to feel qualms over the matter, its museum-size overabundance of vocabulary, it shoulder-shrug approach to spelling, its don't-worry-be-happy concern for grammar--the result was a language whose colour and wealth Henry loved.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“We are cynical about our own species, but less so about animals, especially wild ones. We might not shelter them from habitat destruction, but we do tend to shelter them from excessive irony.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Once you’ve been struck by violence, you acquire companions that never leave you entirely: Suspicion, Fear, Anxiety, Despair, Joylessness.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Henry had written a novel because there was a hole in him that needed filling, a question that needed answering, a patch of canvas that needed painting—that blend of anxiety, curiosity and joy that is at the origin of art—and he had filled the hole, answered the question, splashed colour on the canvas, all done for himself, because he had to. Then complete strangers told him that his book had filled a hole in them, had answered a question, had brought colour to their lives. The comfort of strangers, be it a smile, a pat on the shoulder or a word of praise, is truly a comfort.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“...he found it where he should have looked first, on the Internet, which is a net indeed, one that can be cast further than the eye can see and be retrieved no matter how heavy the hall, its magical mesh never breaking under the strain but always bringing in the most amazing catch.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Art is rooted in joy.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“The precept that location is key to the success of a business applies to art, and even to life itself: we thrive or wither depending on how nourishing our environment is.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“I don't know then. I wrote my book on the Holocaust without worrying about where the fucking bar code would go.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is color that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was the music from the streets.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Reality escapes us. It's beyond description, even a simple pear. Time eats everything.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

“Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body.”
― Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil