Yann Martel Quotes

The essays are very solipsistic and self-absorbed, I'm totally conscious of that. To me, book writing is fun, and I basically just write about things that are entertaining to myself.

I started writing because I found I could spend more time in my own imagination by doing that than I could by reading.

I guess I could say that I pursue questions that interest me in ways that interest me on the page, but that's awfully vague.

As a novelist, you have to be free. Books can't be an act of filial duty.

I can't constantly be trying to write the unwritten song, the song that the 15-year-old girl needs. I need to write the song that I need.

I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme, or something. If they write about their own experiences, something true is going to emerge.

In a sense, any story that anyone writes is going to be autobiographical - whether it deals directly with the author's experience or not - because it captures what we're obsessed with while working on that particular piece.

I'm a novelist. I'm not a crusader, and I'm not an editorial writer. And I'm not writing fiction to convince anybody of anything.

I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen.

When I am writing anything in general, I just want to tell the story that exists in my head; I don't try to write a parable or make a point.

I categorically resist this idea that films are supposed to be autobiographical and the only stories you tell are about your own life.

Nothing beats novel writing because it's complete expression of you. You just control everything. Not even a movie director has that level of control.

People say there's a book in everyone but I'm not sure there is. There might be a pamphlet in me.

I don't really write for an audience. I just write what the subject seems to me to require.

I just write the stuff I want to at the time, what feels right for me.

I write my books never thinking of an actor.

Yeah, and the language the "we" has, and the character the "we" has. Because that was the part of the book that I didn't plan out, but the part that I was most curious about as I was writing. You know what you're doing, but you're sometimes still sort of curious as you're writing it.

I decided to start anew-to strip away what I had been taught, to accept as true my own thinking. This was one of the best times of my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing, no one interested, no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown-no one to satisfy but myself. I began with charcoal and paper and decided not to use any color until it was impossible to do what I wanted to do in black and white. I believe it was June before I needed blue.

For me, filmmaking is not exactly a career. I was never in it for Hollywood or anything. My films are markers of where I am in life, where I am in my head. So that's what I'm working on, and I try to keep things in proportion - life and filmmaking. One feeds into the other.

I want to be my own artist and reflect my creativity.. I don't want to be turned into a pop princess; that's not who I am.

That's what I love about writing is you don't need anyone's permission to do it. You can just get up in the morning, grab a pad and pen and start writing.

I'm just going to keep trying to write music for me because that's what got me here.

I just worked my own personal thoughts into my music, and just kept at it until I found a way in.

I was talking to so many teenagers for so long that I started to feel like, 'I have my own story I want to tell, and I need to do it soon.' So I started to store away pieces that eventually became 'Speech & Debate.' I felt this burning need to write it while I still had not only all of the ideas but the passion to do it.

I've never written specifically for children as such. I write to please myself, and if it is suitable, it gets printed as a children's book.