Yann Martel Quotes

We lived always in the stretch or sag of nerves, either on the crest or in the trough of waves of feeling.

I love that, even after jumping through hoops forever, I can still get that buzz, that hook. That's very healthy, but it's bittersweet, too, because if you don't get the part, you have to deal with the disappointment. I don't think I'll ever negotiate those peaks and troughs wholly healthily.

Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.

I've had the big ups and the big downs.

Music is such a joy, just an absolute joy.

When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.

Do I perform sometimes in a manic style? Yes. Am I manic all the time? No. Do I get sad? Oh yeah. Does it hit me hard? Oh yeah.

Blue' is actually my favorite chapter because it captures sadness more than the other chapters. That might sound weird but I've always been drawn to the rawest emotions.

There's a lot of insecurities and I think that's being human. There's highs and lows and it's about navigating through that.

Being bipolar is a huge exaggeration of your emotions. You can be pretty high and also terribly low, so I've been through it all.

Extreme pain to extreme pleasure has been the story of my entire life.

Romantic love is an addiction: a perfectly wonderful addiction when it's going well, and a perfectly horrible addiction when it's going poorly.

Quick note here: if this crush-slash-swooning stuff is hard for you to stomach, if youve never had a similar experience, then you should come to grips with the fact that youve got a TV dinner for a heart and might want to consider climbing inside a microwave and turning it on high for at least an hour, which if you do consider only goes to show what kind of idiot you truly are because microwaves are way too small for anyone, let alone you, to climb into.

I don't remember what they said, only the fury of their words, how the air turned raw and full of welts. Later it would remind me of birds trapped inside a closed room, flinging themselves against the windows and the walls, against each other.

There is no complete spiritual life without music, for the human soul has regions which can be illuminated only by music.

I started with poetry because it was direct, immediate, and short. It was the ecstasy of striking matches in the dark.

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

But I saw the pain and sadness in everything, and swirled it round my mouth like a fine wine.

Music, the mosaic of the air.

With someone you like that much, the lows are as low as the highs are high. Does that make sense?' It does. It also makes me sound bipolar.' Love will do that to a person.

I hadn’t realized that music could unlock things in you, could transport you to somewhere even the composer hadn’t predicted. It left an imprint in the air around you, as if you carried its remnants with you when you went.

The man in ecstasy and the man drowning - both throw up their arms. The first to signify harmony, the second to signify strife with the elements.

It is music that causes the heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy and fright.

Then I began to play. Variations on a G major chord, the most wonderful chord known to mankind, infinitely happy. I could live inside a G major chord, with Grace, if she was willing. Everything uncomplicated and good about me could be summed up by that chord.

Reading [poetry], you know, is rather like opening the door to a horde of rebels who swarm out attacking one in twenty places at once - hit, roused, scraped, bared, swung through the air, so that life seems to flash by; then again blinded, knocked on the head - all of which are agreeable sensations for a reader (since nothing is more dismal than to open the door and get no response).