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We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie.

Michael Ondaatje

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Michael Ondaatje
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 12
Author
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Ondaatje
Wish
Heart
Love
Untie
Knot
Knots
Loss

More quotes by Michael Ondaatje

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Come. We must go deeper with no justice and no jokes.
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How does this happen? To fall in love and be disassembled.
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There was always, he thought, this pleasure ahead of him, an ace of joy up his sleeve so he could say you can do anything to me, take everything away, put me in prison, but I will know [her] when we are old.
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The last three books are much more a case of a moment of history, what happened almost by accident or coincidence, like being in the same elevator or lifeboat.
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There's more danger in the violence you don't face.
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All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.
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All I ever wanted was a world without maps.
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As a writer, one is busy with archaeology.
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It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself.
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He knows that the only way he can accept losing her is if he can continue to hold her or be held by her. If they can somehow nurse each other out of this. Not with a wall.
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Truth, at the wrong time, can be dangerous.
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Right now, I have no idea what I will write or if I will write again.
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If you look at Japanese film, it is made up of collage or bricolage, it is made up of lists, and suddenly when you stand back from the lists you begin to see the pattern of a life.
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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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What he would say, he cannot say to this woman whose openness is like a wound, whose youth is not mortal yet. He cannot alter what he loves most in her, her lack of compromise, where the romance of the poems she loves still sits with ease in the real world. Outside these qualities he knows there is no order in the world.
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He was a man who wrote, who interpreted the world. Wisdom grew out of being handed just the smallest sliver of emotion. A glance could lead to paragraphs of theory.
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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)
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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
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There always should be something hanging unfinished before a scene ends so that there's a reason for going to the next scene.
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Some events take a lifetime to reveal their damage and influence.
Michael Ondaatje