You can't quantify human pain the way you can measure out sugar. Death comes one individual at a time.
Yann MartelRead
Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the complex emotions of missing someone, blending love with pain.
In this quote, Yann Martel expresses the paradox of missing someone who is no longer present in one's life, illustrating how love can persist even amid loss. The mention of dreams, particularly nightmares touched by love, highlights the emotional turmoil and longing that accompany the process of grieving, capturing the strangeness and depth of human emotions.
Themes
LoveLossDreamsHeartEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about love and loss, you could use this quote to illustrate the complexities of human emotions.
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.
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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.
Yann MartelRead
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