English En
  • Deutsche De
  • English En
  • Français Fr
  • Русский Ru

We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our marketing and analytics partners who may combine it with other information you've provided to them or which they've separately collected from you. You also may to see our Privacy Policy. By clicking the OK button below, you accept our cookies.

Authors:
Michael Ondaatje Quotes

Michael Ondaatje quotes about thinking

Canadian Author, Writer, Poet September 12, 1943

Michael Ondaatje quotes in russian
 Cite this Page: Citation

Quotes

Tell me, is it possible to love someone who is not as smart as you are? ...But isn't it important for you to think she is smarter than you in order to fall in love? ...Why is that? 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
Could you fall in love with her if she wasn't smarter than you? I mean, she may not be smarter than you. But isn't it important for you to think she is smarter than you in order to fall in love? Think now. Michael Ondaatje
But there was a discipline, it was just that we didn't understand. We thought he was formless, but I think now he was tormented by order, what was outside it. He tore apart the plot - see his music was immediately on top of his own life. Echoing. As if, when he was playing he was lost and hunting for the right accidental notes. Listening to him was like talking to Coleman. You were both changing direction with every sentence, sometimes in the middle, using each other as a springboard through... 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
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
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
Nowadays he doesn't think of his wife, though he knows he can turn around and evoke every move of her, describe any aspect of her, the weigh of her wrist on his heart during the night. Michael Ondaatje
Maybe this is the way to come out of a war, he thinks. A burned man to care for, some sheets to wash in a fountain, a room painted like a garden. Michael Ondaatje
How we are almost nothing. We think, in our youth, we are the centre of the universe, but we simply respond, go this way or that by accident, survive or improve by the luck of the draw, with little choice or determination on our part. Michael Ondaatje
-I think you are inhuman. If I leave you, who will you go to? Would you find another lover? I said nothing. -Deny it, damn you! Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje quote: "Why is it when I hear the phrase ‘trompe l’oeil’ I think of..."
Why is it when I hear the phrase ‘trompe l’oeil’ I think of oysters” I heard her say once. Michael Ondaatje

Popular Author

Related Authors