Quote

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

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Michael Ondaatje
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 12
Author
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Ondaatje
Language
Properly
Desire
Lover
Another
European
Everything
Motive
Long
Forgive
Never
Forgiving
Guile
Lovers
Translate
Words
Selfishness

More quotes by Michael Ondaatje

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It's a discovery of a story when I write a book, a case of inching ahead on each page and discovering what's beyond in the darkness, beyond where you're writing.
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People don't write about kids you have to give them a lot of freedom, and that causes anarchy and that causes farce.
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I tend not to know what the plot is or the story is or even the theme. Those things come later, for me.
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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.
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How can you smile as though your whole life hasn't capsized
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Githa Hariharan's fiction is wonderful-full of subtleties and humor and tenderness.
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Research can be a big clunker. It's difficult to know how you can make the historical light.
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There's more danger in the violence you don't face.
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All I ever wanted was a world without maps.
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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.
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One of the things that happens in novels it's almost like a continual debate with yourself. That's why you're writing the book. It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself.
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Here. Where I am anonymous and alone in a white room with no history and no parading. So I can make something unknown in the shape of this room. Where I am King of Corners.
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I don't see novels ending with any real sense of closure.
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Half a page--and the morning is already ancient.
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For echo is the soul of the voice exciting itself in hollow places.
Michael Ondaatje
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A writer uses a pen instead of a scalpel or blow torch.
Michael Ondaatje
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There's a lot of thievery involved in writing. You're breaking into other people's spaces and other people's stories.
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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.
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I want the marginality to come into the center. This is the thing I was conscious of growing up, when I later lived in England. I saw all these war movies that came out shortly after the war, and they were all about the war being fought by Englishmen or Americans, there were no other allies in it - from India or Australia, etc.
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It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow.
Michael Ondaatje