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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

A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands knowing it is something more than water. There is a plant whose heart, if one cuts it out is replaced with fluid containing herbal goodness. Every morning one can drink the liquid amount of the missing heart. Michael Ondaatje
I believe in such cartography? to be marked by nature, not just label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. ... All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps. Michael Ondaatje
You think that you are an iconoclast, but you’re not. You just move, or replace what you cannot have. If you fail at something, you retreat into something else. Nothing changes you.... I left you because I knew I could never change you. You would stand in the room so still sometimes, as if the greatest betrayal of yourself would be to reveal one more inch of your character. Michael Ondaatje
After that month in Cairo she was muted, read constantly, kept more to herself, as if something had occurred or she realized suddenly that wondrous thing about the human being, it can change. She did not have to remain a socialite who had married an adventurer. She was discovering herself. It was painful to watch, because Clifton could not see it, her self-education. Michael Ondaatje
She kept to herself. Most afternoons I caught a glimpse of her in the shadows of B deck, in a deck chair. She always had in her possession a copy of The Magic Mountain, but no one ever saw her reading it. Miss Lasqueti consumed mostly crime thrillers, which constantly seemed to disappoint her. I suspect that for her the world was more accidental than any book's plot. Twice I saw her so irritated by a mystery that she half rose from the shadow of her chair and flung the paperback over the... Michael Ondaatje
He turns his back to the far shore and rows toward it. He can in this way travel away from, yet still see, his house....he feels he is riding a floating skeleton...Some birds in the almost-dark are flying as close to their reflections as possible. Michael Ondaatje
when someone speaks he looks at a mouth, not eyes and their colors, which, it seems to him, will always alter depending on the light of a room, the minute of the day. Mouths reveal insecurity or smugness or any other point on the spectrum of character. For him they are the most intricate aspect of faces. He's never sure what an eye reveals. but he can read how mouths darken into callousness, suggest tenderness. One can often misjudge an eye from its reaction to a simple beam of sunlight. Michael Ondaatje
I have been seeing dragons again. Last night, hunched on a beaver dam, one held a body like a badly held cocktail; his tail, keeping the beat of a waltz, sent a morse of ripples to my canoe. They are not richly brightbut muted like dawnsor the vague sheen on a fly's wing. Their old flesh drags in foldsas they drop into grey pools, strain behind a tree. Finally the others saw one today, trapped, tangled in our badminton net. The minute eyes shuddered deep in the creased facewhile his throat,... Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje quote: "The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this..."
The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human. Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje quote: "In my work I sometimes borrow Claire's nature, as well as her..."
In my work I sometimes borrow Claire's nature, as well as her careful focus on the world. Michael Ondaatje
In the morning she found pieces of a birdchopped and scattered by the fanblood sprayed onto the mosquito net, its body leaving paths on the wallslike red snails that drifted down in lumps. She could imagine the featherswhile she had sleptfalling around herlike slow rain. Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje quote: "In the book the relationship with Katharine and Almasy is sort..."
In the book the relationship with Katharine and Almasy is sort of only in the patient's mind. Michael Ondaatje
Because we want to know things, how the pieces fit. Talkers seduce, words direct us into corners. We want more than anything to grow and change. Brave new world. Michael Ondaatje
Why are you not smarter? It's only the rich who can't afford to be smart. They're compromised. They got locked years ago into privilege. They have to protect their belongings. No one is meaner than the rich. Trust me. But they have to follow the rules of their shitty civilised world. They declare war, they have honour, and they can't leave. But you two. We three. We're free. Michael Ondaatje
She lights a match in the dark hall and moves it onto the wick of the candle. Light lifts itself onto her shoulders. She is on her knees. She puts her hands on her thighs and breathes in the smell of the sulphur. She imagines she slap breathes in light. Michael Ondaatje

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