You can't quantify human pain the way you can measure out sugar. Death comes one individual at a time.
Yann MartelRead
Art is a gift: you create and then you give away. How readers receive that gift is their business. If they hate it, that’s their response to it. Others respond by liking it. Either way, that is their interaction with the book, which is no longer mine.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art is created to be shared, and how it's received by others is outside the creator's control.
This quote by Yann Martel emphasizes the nature of artistic expression as a selfless act of creation. Once an artist produces a piece of work, it is intended to be shared with others, and the creator must accept that the audience's response is independent of their intentions or feelings. Whether the reception is negative or positive, it represents a dialogue between the reader and the artwork, marking a significant separation of ownership once the work is made public.
Themes
ArtGiftCreationResponseInteraction
In practice
Example use cases
During an art exhibition, one might cite this quote to express the importance of audience interpretation.
More from Yann Martel
All quotes →Come aboard if your destination is oblivion- it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat if you want. But it's a sad view.
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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.
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The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.
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I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.
Yann MartelRead
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 MartelRead
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