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Authors:
Michael Ondaatje Quotes

Michael Ondaatje quotes

Canadian Author, Writer, Poet September 12, 1943

Michael Ondaatje quotes in russian
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Quotes

Michael Ondaatje quote: "This was the time in her life that she fell upon booksas the..."
This was the time in her life that she fell upon booksas the only door out of her cell. They became half her world. Michael Ondaatje
All his life he has avoided permanent intimacy. Till this war he has been a better lover than husband. He has been a man who slips away, in the way lovers leave chaos, the way thieves leave reduced houses. Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje quote: "Her hand touched me at the wrist. "If I gave you my life, you..."
Her hand touched me at the wrist. "If I gave you my life, you would drop it. Wouldn't you?"I didn't say anything. Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje quote: "Blood a necklace on me all my life."
Blood a necklace on me all my life. Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje quote: "If I gave you my life, you would drop it wouldnt you?"
If I gave you my life, you would drop it wouldnt you? Michael Ondaatje
Don't we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it...There are some European words you can never translate properly into another language. Michael Ondaatje
You built your walls too, she tells him. So I have my wall. She says it glittering in a beauty he cannot stand. She with her beautiful clothes with her pale face that laughs at everyone who smiles at her... Michael Ondaatje
Read him slowly, dear girl, you must read Kipling slowly. Watch carefully where the commas fall so you can discover the natural pauses. He is a writer who used pen and ink. He looked up from the page a lot, I believe, stared through his window and listened to birds, as most writers who are alone do. Some do not know the names of birds, though he did. Your eye is too quick and North American. Think about the speed of his pen. What an appalling, barnacled old first paragraph it is otherwise. Michael Ondaatje
Sometimes when she is able to spend the night with him they are wakened by the three minarets of the city beginning their prayers before dawn. He walks with her through the indigo markets that lie between South Cairo and her home. The beautiful songs of faith enter the air like arrows, one minaret answering another, as if passing on a rumor of the two of them as they walk through the cold morning air, the smell of charcoal and hemp already making the air profound. Sinners in a holy city. Michael Ondaatje
Her father had taught her about hands. About a dog's paws. Whenever her father was alone with a dog in a house he would lean over and smell the skin at the base of its paw. This, he would say, as if coming away from a brandy snifter, is the greatest smell in the world! A bouquet! Great rumours of travel! She would pretend disgust, but the dog's paw was a wonder: the smell of it never suggested dirt. It's a cathedral! her father had said, so-and-so's garden, that field of grasses, a walk... Michael Ondaatje
There was a time when I could have slept with his friend Briffa, for instance. Around him the air was always fraught with possibilities. Michael Ondaatje
You have to protect yourself from sadness. Sadness is very close to hate. Let me tell you this. This is the thing I learned. If you take in someone else's poison – thinking you can cure them by sharing it – you will instead store it within you. Michael Ondaatje
There was no control except the "mood of his power... and it is for this reason it is good you never heard him play someplace where the weather for instance could change the next series of notes-- then you should never have heard him at all. He was never recorded. He stayed away while others moved into wax history, electronic history, those who said later that Boldon broke the path. It was just as important to watch him stretch and wheel around the last notes or to watch nerves jumping under... Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje quote: "Sleep is a prison for a boy who has friends to meet."
Sleep is a prison for a boy who has friends to meet. Michael Ondaatje
But nothing is said of the closeness between two people: how they grew in the shade of each other's presence. No one speaks of that exchange of gift and character --- the way a person took on and recognized in himself the smile of a lover. Individuals are seen only in the context of these swirling social tides. Michael Ondaatje

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