Yann Martel

They have to be personalized.

So just to take the example of art, but also goes well with religion, in both of those, you matter.

Every religion will say God loves you, which if you're rich, wealthy, healthy like you, we are all here, I don't care about that.

But if you are doing poorly, the idea that someone loves you, you're impoverished on the streets of Calcutta, Jesus, Allah, Krishna loves you,

That's transformative.

That's transformative.

And it works because that story couldn't do that.

Same thing with art.

Art requires you.

A painting on a wall.

Yesterday I went to your art gallery of New South Wales.

Saw this amazing indigenous art that you have there.

It only works once there's a viewer.

You know, there's a social contract to art where there's a creation and there has to be someone who takes it in and then it comes to life.

So art also says to you, I love you because I need you.

And so that power comes from the fact that it's personalized.

And art is like that where science and history are not.

Both go on whether you exist or not.

So there's something about myth that is something that is a buffer between reality and us and makes it manageable.

Because in fact, life is not what happens to us, it's how we interpret us, how we interpret it, which is exactly what Life of Pi is about, is the interpretability, the subjectivity of life, of how you can transform it depending on how you take it.