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I Have Nothing To Say Of My Working Life, Only That A Tie Is A Noose, And Inverted Though It Is, It Will Hang A Man Nonetheless If He's Not Careful.
-Yann Martel
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I Have Nothing To

Yann Martel
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I Have Nothing To Say Of My Working Life, Only That A Tie Is A Noose, And Inverted Though It Is, It Will Hang A Man Nonetheless If He's Not Careful.

Understanding the Quote: "i have nothing to say of my working life, only that a..."

This quote by Yann Martel reflects deeply on the theme of men. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Men, Ties, Careful, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Yann Martel interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Yann Martel

Yann Martel is celebrated for insightful thoughts on men and ties. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Men
Ties
Careful
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These People Fail To Realize That It Is On The Inside That God Must Be Defended, Not On The Outside. They Should Direct Their Anger At Themselves. For Evil In The Open Is But Evil From Within That Has Been Let Out. The Main Battlefield For Good Is Not The Open Ground Of The Public Arena But The Small Clearing Of Each Heart.
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In A Healthy Individual, A Broken Bone That Has Healed Properly Is Strongest Where It Was Once Broken. You Have Not Lost Any Life, Henry Told Himself. You Will Still Get Your Fair Share Of Years. Yet The Quality Of His Life Changed. Once You've Been Struck By Violence, You Acquire Companions That Never Leave You Entirely: Suspicion, Fear, Anxiety, Despair, Joylessness. The Natural Smile Is Taken From You And The Natural Pleasures You Once Enjoyed Lose Their Appeal.
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For Fear, Real Fear Such As Shakes You To Your Foundation, Such As You Feel When You Are Brought Face To Face With Your Mortal End, Nestles In Your Memory Like A Gangrene: It Seeks To Rot Everything, Even The Words With Which To Speak Of It. So You Must Fight Hard To Express It. You Must Fight Hard To Shine The Light Of Words Upon It. Because If You Don't, If Your Fear Becomes A Wordless Darkness That You Avoid, Perhaps Even Manage To Forget, You Open Yourself To Further Attacks Of Fear Because You Never Truly Fought The Opponent Who Defeated You.
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So Tell Me, Since It Makes No Factual Difference To You And You Can't Prove The Question Either Way, Which Story Do You Prefer? Which Is The Better Story, The Story With Animals Or The Story Without Animals?' Mr. Okamoto: 'that's An Interesting Question?' Mr. Chiba: 'the Story With Animals.' Mr. Okamoto: 'yes. The Story With Animals Is The Better Story.' Pi Patel: 'thank You. And So It Goes With God.
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Even When God Seemed To Have Abandoned Me, He Was Watching. Even When He Seemed Indifferent To My Suffering, He Was Watching. And When I Was Beyond All Hope Of Saving, He Gave Me Rest. Then He Gave Me A Sign To Continue My Journey.
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I Love Cinema. I Think The Risk Of The Aesthetics Being Fixed Is Compensated By Other Advantages. Cinema Is Visually Powerful, It Is A Complete Experience, Reaches Different Audience. It's Something I Really Like. I Like Movies.
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Sometimes I Got My Majors Mixed Up. A Number Of My Fellow Religious-studies Students - Muddled Agnostics Who Didn't Know Which Way Was Up, Who Were In The Thrall Of Reason, That Fool's Gold For The Bright - Reminded Me Of The Three-toed Sloth; And The Three-toed Sloth, Such A Beautiful Example Of The Miracle Of Life, Reminded Me Of God.
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I Love Canada...it Is A Great Country Much Too Cold For Good Sense, Inhabited By Compassionate, Intelligent People With Bad Hairdos.
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Words Of Divine Consciousness: Moral Exaltation; Lasting Feelings Of Elevation, Elation, Joy; A Quickening Of The Moral Sense, Which Strikes One As More Important Than An Intellectual Understanding Of Things; An Alignment Of The Universe Along Moral Lines, Not Intellectual Ones; A Realization That The Founding Principle Of Existence Is What We Call Love, Which Works Itself Out Sometimes Not Clearly, Not Cleanly, Not Immediately, Nonetheless Ineluctably.
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Opposites
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Writing
Fiction
Genre
I Wept Heartily Over This Poor Little Deceased Soul. It Was The First Sentient Being I Had Ever Killed. I Was Now A Killer. I Was Now As Guilty As Cain. I Was Sixteen Years Old, A Harmless Boy, Bookish And Religious, And Now I Had Blood On My Hands. It's A Terrible Burden To Carry. All Sentient Life Is Sacred.
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Boys
Blood
How True Is That Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention, How Very True.
Mother
Invention
Very True
[the Taxidermist Is] A Historian, Dealing With An Animal's Past; The Zookeeper Is A Politician, Dealing With An Animal's Present; And Everyone Else Is A Citizen Who Must Decide On That Animal's Future (...) The Indifference Of The Many, Combined With The Active Hatred Of The Few, Has Sealed The Fate Of Animals.
Fate
Animal
Past
Why Can't Reason Give Greater Answers? Why Can We Throw A Question Further Than We Can Pull In An Answer? Why Such A Vast Net If There's So Little Fish To Catch?
Giving
Reptiles
Answers
A Work Of Art Works Because It Is True, Not Because It Is Real.
Art
Real
Works Of Art
Oncoming Death Is Terrible Enough, But Worse Still Is Oncoming Death With Time To Spare, Time In Which All The Happiness That Was Yours And All The Happiness That Might Have Been Yours Becomes Clear To You. You See With Utter Lucidity All That You Are Losing.
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Losing
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Boat
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Peace
Sunny Day
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Most Of Us Get Our History Through Story.
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If Literature Does One Thing, It Makes You More Empathetic By Making You Live Other Lives And Feel The Pain Of Others. Ideologues Don't Feel The Pain Of Others Because They Haven't Imaginatively Got Under Their Skins.
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Empathy
Skins
Mockery Be Damned, My Urine Looked Delicious.
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There Is Nothing More Satisfying Than Having A Sentence Fall Into Place In A Way You Feel Is Right, And Then Adding Another One And Then Another One. It's Extraordinarily Satisfying.
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I Turned Around, Stepped Over The Zebra And Threw Myself Overboard.
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Books, Like People, Can't Be Reduced To The Cost Of The Materials With Which They Were Made. Books, Like People, Become Unique And Precious Once You Get To Know Them.
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Unique
People
I Went About The Job In A Direct Way. I Took The Hatchet In Both My Hands And Vigorously Beat The Fish On The Head With The Hammerhead (i Still Didn’t Have The Stomach To Use The Sharp Edge). The Dorado Did The Most Extraordinary Thing As It Died: It Began To Flash All Kinds Of Colours In Rapid Succession. Blue, Green, Red, Gold, And Violet Flickered And Shimmered Neon-like On Its Surface As It Struggled. I Felt I Was Beating A Rainbow To Death.
Jobs
Blue
Hands
Faith In God Is An Opening Up, A Letting Go, A Deep Trust, A Free Act Of Love—but Sometimes It Was So Hard To Love. Sometimes My Heart Was Sinking So Fast With Anger, Desolation And Weariness, I Was Afraid It Would Sink To The Very Bottom Of The Pacific And I Would Not Be Able To Lift It Back Up.
Letting Go
Heart
Opening Up
We Commonly Say In The Trade That The Most Dangerous Animal In A Zoo Is Man.
Zoos
Animal
Men
Animals In The Wild Lead Lives Of Compulsion And Necessity Within An Unforgiving Social Hierarchy In An Environment Where The Supply Of Fear Is High And The Supply Of Food Is Low And Where Territory Must Constantly Be Defended And Parasites Forever Endured.
Animal
Forever
Social Hierarchy
If You Went To A Home, Kicked Down The Front Door, Chased The People Who Lived There Out Into The Street And Said, Go! You Are Free! Free As A Bird! Go! Go! - Do You Think They Would Shout And Dance For Joy? They Wouldn't. Birds Are Not Free. The People You've Just Evicted Would Sputter, With What Right Do You Throw Us Out? This Is Our Home. We Own It. We Have Lived Here For Years. We're Calling The Police, You Scoundrel.
Home
Thinking
Doors
Colonialism Is A Terrible Bane For A People Upon Whom It Is Imposed, But A Blessing For A Language. English's Drive To Exploit The New And The Alien, Its Zeal In Robbing Words From Other Languages, Its Incapacity To Feel Qualms Over The Matter, Its Museum-size Overabundance Of Vocabulary, It Shoulder-shrug Approach To Spelling, Its Don't-worry-be-happy Concern For Grammar-the Result Was A Language Whose Colour And Wealth Henry Loved.
Love
Blessing
Qualms About
The Idea Of A Flip Book Still Really Appeals To Me. That Idea Of Fiction And Non-fiction.
Book
Ideas
Fiction
I've Never Forgotten Him. 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. I Still Cannot Understand How He Could Abandon Me So Unceremoniously, Without Any Sort Of Goodbye, Without Looking Back Even Once. The Pain Is Like An Axe That Chops My Heart.
Goodbye
Dream
Pain
So You Want Another Story?" Uhh... No. We Would Like To Know What Really Happened." Doesn't The Telling Of Something Always Become A Story?" Uhh... Perhaps In English. In Japanese A Story Would Have An Element Of Invention In It. We Don't Want Any Invention. We Want The 'straight Facts,' As You Say In English." Isn't Telling About Something--using Words, English Or Japanese--already Something Of An Invention? Isn't Just Looking Upon This World Already Something Of An Invention?
Stories
Elements
World
Art Is The Suitcase Of History, Carrying The Essentials. Art Is The Life Buoy Of History. Art Is Seed, Art Is Memory, Art Is Vaccine.
Art
Memories
Vaccines
The Three Religions Because I Wanted To Discuss Faith, Not Organized Religion, So Wanted To Relativize Organized Religion By Having Pi Practice Three. I Would Have Like Pi To Be A Jew, Too, To Practice Judaism, But There Are Two Religions That Are Explicitly Incompatible: Christianity And Judaism. Where One Begins, The Other Ends, According To Christians, And Where One Endures, The Other Strays, According To Jews.
Christian
Practice
Two
That's What Fiction Is About, Isn't It, The Selective Transforming Of Reality? The Twisting Of It To Bring Out Its Essence?
Reality
Essence
Fiction
Truth Is A Nebulous Thing. There Are Certain, Definite Truths, But The Truth Of Our Lives Goes Far Beyond Facts.
Facts
Truth Is
Certain
Life And Death Live And Die In Exactly The Same Spot, The Body. It Is From There That Both Babies And Cancers Are Born.
Baby
Cancer
Life And Death
It Is Simple And Brutal: A Person Can Get Used To Anything, Even To Killing.
Simple
Killing
Used
Zoo Is An Artificial Territory, An Approximation. Civilization Is Our Natural Territory.
Zoos
Civilization
Territory
When You've Suffered A Great Deal In Life, Each Additional Pain Is Both Unbearable And Trifling.
Sad
Pain
Unbearable
I Spent More Hours Than I Can Count A Quiet Witness To The Highly Mannered, Manifold Expressions Of Life That Grace Our Planet. It Is Something So Bright, Loud, Weird And Delicate As To Stupefy The Senses.
Expression
Grace
Earth
Stories--individual Stories, Family Stories, National Stories--are What Stitch Together The Disparate Elements Of Human Existence Into A Coherent Whole. We Are Story Animals.
Animal
Together
Stories
My Life Is Like A Memento Mori Painting From European Art: There Is Always A Grinning Skull At My Side To Remind Me Of The Folly Of Human Ambition.
Art
Ambition
Skulls
I Chose The Name Pi Because It's An Irrational Number (one With No Discernable Pattern). Yet Scientists Use This Irrational Number To Come To A "rational" Understanding Of The Universe. To Me, Religion Is A Bit Like That, "irrational" Yet With It We Come Together We Come To A Sound Understanding Of The Universe.
Irrational Numbers
Names
Understanding
At Moments Of Wonder, It Is Easy To Avoid Small Thinking, To Entertain Thoughts That Span The Universe, That Capture Both Thunder And Tinkle, Thick And Thin, The Near And The Far.
Thinking
Wonder
Moments
He's A Shy Man. Life Has Taught Him Not To Show Off What Is Most Precious To Him.
Men
Shy
Taught
To My Mind, Faith Is Like Being In The Sun. When You Are In The Sun, Can You Avoid Creating A Shadow? Can You Shake That Area Of Darkness That Clings To You, Always Shaped Like You, As If Constantly To Remind You Of Yourself? You Can’t. This Shadow Is Doubt. And It Goes Wherever You Go As Long As You Stay In The Sun. And Who Wouldn’t Want To Be In The Sun?
Creating
Long
Darkness
I Think Art Comes From Some Sense Of Discomfort With The World, Some Sense Of Not Quite Fitting With It.
Art
Thinking
World
Religion Is Just An Alternate Way Of Reading Reality - You Read Material Reality, And Then You Add On An Extra Layer Of Religiosity That Deepens That Understanding Of Reality. Some Countries Have Lost That Capacity, Or Dismissed It Or Marginalized It.
Country
Reading
Reality
A Movie Tends To Box You In, At Least As Far As The Aesthetics. You Have An Incredibly Kinetic Experience, Which Is The Joy Of Cinema.
Joy
Cinema
Boxes
Nature Can Put On A Thrilling Show. The Stage Is Vast, The Lighting Is Dramatic, The Extras Are Innumerable, And The Budget For Special Effects Is Absolutely Unlimited.
Special
Dramatic
Unlimited
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.
Grateful
Air
Doubt
I Have Read That There Are Two Fears That Cannot Be Trained Out Of Us: The Startle Reaction Upon Hearing An Unexpected Noise, And Vertigo. I Would Like To Add A Third, To Wit, The Rapid And Direct Approch Of A Known Killer
Two
Hearing
Add
I Felt I Was Beating A Rainbow To Death
Rainbow
Felt
Don’t Worry About Being Good…. Aspire To Be Authentic.
Worry
Be Good
Aspire
India Is A Place Where All Stories Are Possible. You Forget That The Imagination Can Take Hold Of Anything And Contemplate It And Love It And Describe It.
Imagination
And Love
India
Life Is A Peephole, A Single Tiny Entry Onto A Vastness--how Can I Not Dwell On This Brief, Cramped View Of Things? This Peephole Is All I've Got!
Views
Vastness
Tiny
Faith In God Is An Opening Up, A Letting Go, A Deep Trust, A Free Act Of Love - But Sometimes It Was So Hard To Love.
Letting Go
Opening Up
Faith In God
Blessed Be Shock. Blessed Be The Part Of Us That Protects Us From Too Much Pain And Sorrow. At The Heart Of Life Is A Fusebox.
Pain
Blessed
Heart
How Bitterly Glad I Am To See You. You Bring Joy And Pain In Equal Measure. Joy Because You Are With Me, But Pain Because It Won't Be For Long. What Do You Know About The Sea? Nothing. What Do I Know About The Sea? Nothing. Without A Driver This Bus Is Lost. Our Lives Are Over. 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. Oh Enough Of This Disembling. Let Me Say Plainly: I Love You, I Love You, I Love You. I Love You, I Love You, I Love You. Not The Spiders, Please.
Pain
Love You
Views
The Lower You Are, The Higher Your Mind Will Want To Soar. It Was Natural That, Bereft And Desperate As I Was, In The Throes Of Unremitting Suffering. I Should Turn To God
Mind
Suffering
Want
High Calls Low And Low Calls High. I Tell You, If You Were In Such Dire Straits As I Was, You Too Would Elevate Your Thoughts. The Lower You Are, The Higher Your Mind Will Want To Soar.
Mind
Want
Lows
To Me, Religion Is About Our Dignity, Not Our Depravity.
Dignity
Depravity
The Reason Death Sticks So Closely To Life Isn’t Biological Necessity – It’s Envy.
Envy
Sticks
Reason
My Suffering Left Me Sad And Gloomy.
Suffering
Gloomy
Left
For Evil In The Open Is But Evil From Within That Has Been Let Out.
Evil
Has Beens
We Are All Born Like Catholics, Aren't We—in Limbo, Without Religion, Until Some Figure Introduces Us To God?
Catholic
Introducing
Born
It's Important In Life To Conclude Things Properly. Only Then Can You Let Go. Otherwise You Are Left With Words You Should Have Said But Never Did, And Your Heart Is Heavy With Remorse.
Letting Go
Heart
Should Have
There Are Always Those Who Take It Upon Themselves To Defend God... These People Fail To Realize That It Is On The Inside That God Must Be Defended, Not On The Outside.
People
Realizing
Failing
What Works In A Story Is Very Different Than What Works In Cinema. For Example, Dialogue In Books: If You Translate It Too Faithfully, It Sounds A Little Stilted, Because We Often Don't Speak The Way We Speak In Novels. Oral Language Is Much Punchier, Shorter Sentences.
Book
Littles
Way
Religion Is More Than Rite And Ritual.
Life Of Pi Book
Rite
Ritual
If You Stumble At Mere Believability, What Are You Living For? Isn't Love Hard To Believe?
Believe
Belief
Life Of Pi Book
I Can Only Tell My Story, What You Believe Is Up To You.
Believe
Up To You
Stories
I Wept Like A Child. It Was Not Because I Was Overcome At Having Survived My Ordeal, Though I Was. Nor Was It The Presence Of My Brothers And Sisters, Though That Too Was Very Moving. I Was Weeping Because ....fill In The Blank With Whatever/whoever Helped You Survive... Had Left Me So Unceremoniously.
Brother
Children
Moving
Just Do It. Get It Down On The Page. Work Hard. And Then Let Go. Ask Yourself Why You Want To Write. You Have To Be Clear About That.
Letting Go
Writing
Hard Work
I Know Zoos Are No Longer In People's Good Graces. Religion Faces The Same Problem. Certain Illusions About Freedom Plague Them Both.
Zoos
People
Grace
Don’t You Bully Me With Your Politeness!
Bully
Politeness
I Am A Person Who Believes In Form, In The Harmony Of Order. Where We Can, We Must Give Things A Meaningful Shape.
Meaningful
Believe
Order
Despair Was A Heavy Blackness That Let No Light In Or Out. It Was A Hell Beyond Expression. I Thank God It Always Passed.
Expression
Light
Despair
Music Moves Me - Duh - And That Is Like Having A Window Opening On A Heightened Reality, But The Effect Is Fleeting: When The Music Ends, The Magic, The Uplifting, Vanishes And The Window Slams Shut. Words, On The Other Hand, By The Nature Of How They Work, Emotions Evoked By Dint Of Carefully Laid Out Thoughts, Have A More Lingering Effect.
Uplifting
Moving
Reality
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. As For Nonfiction, For History, It May Be Real, But Its Truth Is Slippery, Hard To Access, With No Fixed Meaning Bolted To It. If History Doesn't Become Story, It Dies To Everyone Except The Historian.
Real
Emotional
Fiction
I Wish I Could Convey The Perfection Of A Seal Slipping Into Water Or A Spider Monkey Swinging From Point To Point Or A Lion Merely Turning Its Head. But Language Founders In Such Seas. Better To Picture It In Your Head If You Want To Feel It.
Sea
Water
Perfection
Isn't Telling About Something-using Words, English Or Japanese-already Something Of An Invention? Isn't Just Looking Upon This World Already Something Of An Invention?
World
Using Words
Invention
I Explore It Now In The Only Place Left For It, My Memory.
Memories
Left
I Am Reminded Of A Story Of Lord Krishna When He Was A Cowherd. Every Night He Invites The Milkmaids To Dance With Him In The Forest. They Come And They Dance. The Night Is Dark, The Fire In Their Midst Roars And Crackles, The Beat Of The Music Gets Ever Faster - The Girls Dance And Dance And Dance With Their Sweet Lord, Who Has Made Himself So Abundant As To Be In The Arms Of Each And Every Girl. But The Moment The Girls Become Possessive, The Moment Each One Imagines That Krishna Is Her Partner Alone, He Vanishes. So It Is That We Should Not Be Jealous Of God.
Girl
Sweet
Jealous
Quickly You Make Rash Decisions. You Dismiss Your Last Allies: Hope And Trust. There, You've Defeated Yourself. Fear, Which Is But An Impression, Has Triumphed Over You.
Decision
Over You
Allies
We Think We Live In A Global Village. We Don't. The World Is A Big And Beautiful And Incredibly Varied Place. It Can Only Be Known Locally, With Your Two Feet On The Ground. We Should Stick To Our Own Gardens, As Voltaire Said.
Beautiful
Garden
Thinking
Words Are Cold, Muddy Toads Trying To Understand Sprites Dancing In A Field-but They're All We Have.
Dancing
Trying
Toads
And In Between The Two, In Between The Sky And The Sea, Were All The Winds. And There Were All The Nights And All The Moons. To Be A Castaway Is To Be A Point Perpetually At The Centre Of A Circle. However Much Things May Appear To Change-the Sea May Shift From Whisper To Rage, The Sky Might Go From Fresh Blue To Blinding White To Darkest Black-the Geometry Never Changes. Your Gaze Is Always A Radius. The Circumference Is Ever Great. In Fact, The Circles Multiply. To Be A Castaway Is To Be Caught In A Harrowing Ballet Of Circles.
Moon
Night
Blue
As For Hearing, The Sloth Is Not So Much Deaf As Uninterested In Sound.
Sloth
Sound
Hearing
My Greatest Wish — Other Than Salvation — Was To Have A Book. A Long Book With A Never-ending Story. One I Could Read Again And Again, With New Eyes And A Fresh Understanding Each Time.
Book
Eye
Long
I Couldn't Get Him Out Of My Head. Still Can't. I Spent Three Solid Days Thinking About Him. The More He Bothered Me, The Less I Coul Forget Him. And The More I Learned About Him, The Less I Wanted To Leave Him.
Thinking
Three
Forget
It Was As Unbelievable As The Moon Catching Fire.
Moon
Fire
Catching
The Animals Might Embody Certain Traits. We Think Of Tigers As Being Ferocious, Etc. But To My Mind, It Was The Other Way Around: The Humans Embodied Certain Animal Traits.
Animal
Thinking
Mind
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.
Views
Together
Want
Words Are Much Better At Relating Emotions And Thoughts.
Emotion
The Planet Is Populated By Human Beings, Of Which There Are Only Two Sexes, And The Role Of The Writer Is To Explore Otherness, Other Realities. So The Idea Of A Man Exploring What It's Like To Be A Woman Doesn't Strike Me As Being That Wild Or Crazy An Idea.
Sex
Crazy
Men
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.
Art
Hate
Book
People Always Seek To Compare. They Can Take The New, But Only If It Is Somehow Connected To The Familiar. We Need That In Our Lives, The Mix Of The New And The Old. But Of Course I'm Flattered About The Comparison With Old Man And The Sea. Hemingway Is A Great Writer.
Men
Sea
People
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