Yann Martel Quotes

The 'Glass' is not my autobiography, nor is it self-expression. Far from it.

There is this assumption that much of what I write is about my life, and that simply is not true.

Autobiographical fiction is very tricky.

There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.

I tell people not to write too soon about their lives. Writing about yourself too young is loaded with psychological complexities.

I never fantasized or invented a thing, not one thing. I knew every single thing I ever wrote about.

Well I'm not a novelist. I've only written one book and that is a memoir.

When it comes to memoir, we want to catch the author in a lie. When we read fiction, we want to catch the author telling the truth.

There may be a point where I may decide to write an autobiography.

All novels must be autobiographical because I am the only material that I know. All of the characters are me. But at the same time, a novel is never autobiographical even if it describes the life of the author. Literary writing is a completely different medium.

I write autobiographically, although I apply liberal amounts of poetic license.

I love writing both fiction and memoir. Both have unique challenges; bottom line, fiction is hard because you have to come up with the credible, twisty plot, and memoir is hard because you have to say something true and profound, albeit in a funny way.

People write memoirs because they lack the imagination to make things up.

One of the most attractive things about writing your autobiography is that you're not dead.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it's so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

My work is purely autobiographical... It is about myself and my surroundings.

Writing this book feels like a completely different activity from writing my comic strip because it's about real life. I feel like I'm using a part of my brain that's been dormant until now.

In 'Out of the Dark,' I'm talking about my own life. I'm not talking as a character or speaking as a character. I was not as free as when I write fiction.

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I'm talking about myself very directly.

All through my writing life, I've had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

I don't write autobiographically.

Anything I write is going to be autobiographical and true to some degree.

My 'Report to Greco' is not an autobiography.

In many ways, I've been writing personal stories all my life.

We've always written from personal experiences.