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There is a story, always ahead of you. Barely existing. Only gradually do you attach yourself to it and feed it. You discover the carapace that will contain and test your character. You will find in this way the path of your life.
Michael Ondaatje
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Michael Ondaatje
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 12
Author
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Ondaatje
Test
Find
Carapace
Way
Ahead
Attach
Always
Discover
Barely
Life
Tests
Contain
Path
Gradually
Story
Existing
Stories
Feed
Character
More quotes by Michael Ondaatje
When I write my novels I don't really have a huge plan beforehand I don't have the whole plot and architecture, so the story is sort of discovered as I write it.
Michael Ondaatje
There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross.
Michael Ondaatje
A blind lover, don't know what I love till I write it out
Michael Ondaatje
So the books for the Englishman, as he listened intently or not, had gaps of plot like sections of a road washed out by storms, missing incidents as if locusts had consumed a section of tapestry, as if plaster loosened by the bombing had fallen away from a mural at night.
Michael Ondaatje
So we came to understand that small and important thing, that our lives could be large with interesting strangers who would pass us without any personal involvement.
Michael Ondaatje
It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow.
Michael Ondaatje
I don't see novels ending with any real sense of closure.
Michael Ondaatje
all this Beethoven and rain
Michael Ondaatje
I'm a Canadian citizen. But I always want to feel at home in Sri Lanka. I'm a member of both countries.
Michael Ondaatje
To write about someone like myself would be very limiting.
Michael Ondaatje
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
There's a lot of thievery involved in writing. You're breaking into other people's spaces and other people's stories.
Michael Ondaatje
Politically I also don't believe anymore that we can only have one voice to a story, it's like having one radio station to represent a country. You want the politics of any complicated situation to be complicated in a book of fiction or nonfiction.
Michael Ondaatje
Women want everything of a lover. And too often I would sink below the surface. So armies disappear under sand. And there was her fear of her husband, her belief in her honour, my old desire for self-sufficiency, my disappearances, her suspicions of me, my disbelief that she loved me. The paranoia and claustrophobia of hidden love.
Michael Ondaatje
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.
Michael Ondaatje
The past is still, for us, a place that is not safely settled.
Michael Ondaatje
You don't want to write your own opinion, you don't want to just represent yourself, but represent yourself through someone else.
Michael Ondaatje
A writer uses a pen instead of a scalpel or blow torch.
Michael Ondaatje
Come. We must go deeper with no justice and no jokes.
Michael Ondaatje
This last night we tear into each other, as if to wound, as if to find the key to everything before morning.
Michael Ondaatje
