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All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.

Michael Ondaatje

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Michael Ondaatje
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 12
Author
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Ondaatje
Upon
Earth
Cartography
Desired
Maps
Walk
Walks

More quotes by Michael Ondaatje

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He walked out of the hospital into the sun, into open air for the first time in months, out of the green-lit rooms that lay like glass in his mind. He stood there breathing everything in, the hurry of everyone. First, he thought, I need shoes with rubber on the bottom. I need gelato.
Michael Ondaatje
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The music of Gavin Bryars falls under no category. It is mongrel, full of sensuality and wit and is deeply moving. He is one of the few composers who can put slapstick and primal emotion alongside each other. He allows you to witness new wonders in the sounds around you by approaching them from a completely new angle. With a third ear maybe.
Michael Ondaatje
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You must talk to me, Caravaggio. Or am I just a book? Something to be read, some creature to be tempted out of a loch and shot full of morphine, full of corridors, lies, loose vegetation, pockets of stones.
Michael Ondaatje
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I don't have a plan for a story when I sit down to write. I would get quite bored carrying it out.
Michael Ondaatje
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This last night we tear into each other, as if to wound, as if to find the key to everything before morning.
Michael Ondaatje
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It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself.
Michael Ondaatje
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Sleep is a prison for a boy who has friends to meet.
Michael Ondaatje
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I want to die on your chest but not yet she wrote sometime in the 13th century of our love
Michael Ondaatje
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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.
Michael Ondaatje
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She had always wanted words, she loved them grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.
Michael Ondaatje
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The past is still, for us, a place that is not safely settled.
Michael Ondaatje
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I see the poem or the novel ending with an open door.
Michael Ondaatje
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Sadness is very close to hate.
Michael Ondaatje
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Over the years, confusing fragments, lost corners of stories, have a clearer meaning when seen in a new light, a different place.
Michael Ondaatje
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Once I've discovered the story, I might restructure it, maybe move things around, set up a clue that something is going to happen later, but that happens much later in an editorial capacity.
Michael Ondaatje
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This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became half her world.
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.
Michael Ondaatje
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We keep wanting to save those who are forlorn in this world. It’s a male habit.
Michael Ondaatje
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Death means you are in the third person.
Michael Ondaatje
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Snap. Lady with dog. Lady on sofa half-naked. Snap. Naked lady. Lady next to dresser. Lady at window. Snap. Lady on balcony sunlight. (On New Orleans photographer E. J. Bellocq)
Michael Ondaatje