Yann Martel Quotes

The world is MADE up of language. We can SAY that the world is composed of little demons doing calisthenics, each one the size of a pissant's eyebrow.... Or we can SAY the world is made of tiny wave mechanical packets of matter hurling through space at near the speed of light.... But notice that what we get each time are WORDS.

I'm very interested in language because it reflects our obsessions and ways of conceptualising the world.

Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.

Our world isn't made of earth, air and water or even molecules and atoms; our world is made of language.

Being that can be understood is language.

In a world of more brilliance words don't mean anything.

"Is," "is," "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.

Every word written is a net to catch the word that has escaped.

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

I don't think there is such a thing as an idea without words, because your language is your thought.

Like a pane of glass framing and subtly distorting our vision, mental models determine what we see.

Everything we say is a story. But nothing we say is just a story.

In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.

The human understanding of its own nature is prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds.

Words exist because of meaning; once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.

There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world.

Language is the picture and counterpart of thought.

POLONIUS: What do you read, my lord? HAMLET: Words, words, words.

As soon as we put something into words, we devalue it in a strange way. We think we have plunged into the depths of the abyss, and when we return to the surface the drop of water on our pale fingertips no longer resembles the sea from which it comes. We delude ourselves that we have discovered a wonderful treasure trove, and when we return to the light of day we find that we have brought back only false stones and shards of glass; and yet the treasure goes on glimmering in the dark, unaltered.

The world you see is less of an indication about the world and more of an indication about your seeing.

Words and a book and a belief that the world is words.

Language always preserves a play or figure/ground relation between experience, and perception and its replay in expression.

Language is the writer's only tool - we really don't have anything else - but our language contains within it our entire experience of the world.

One of the hardest things in the world is to convey a meaning accurately from one mind to another.

How we see the world changes all the time. It all depends on our mood.