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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
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Michael Ondaatje
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 12
Author
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Ondaatje
Lives
Stranger
Without
Pass
Important
Large
Thing
Personal
Would
Small
Came
Interesting
Involvement
Understand
Strangers
More quotes by Michael Ondaatje
She had always wanted words, she loved them grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.
Michael Ondaatje
It's an odd state to be in, blowing the whistle on your home country.
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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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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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Some events take a lifetime to reveal their damage and influence.
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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
Sadness is very close to hate.
Michael Ondaatje
There always should be something hanging unfinished before a scene ends so that there's a reason for going to the next scene.
Michael Ondaatje
A blind lover, don't know what I love till I write it out
Michael Ondaatje
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
she had a laugh that hinted it had rolled around once or twice in the mud.
Michael Ondaatje
Over the years, confusing fragments, lost corners of stories, have a clearer meaning when seen in a new light, a different place.
Michael Ondaatje
There's always been anger in the making of music or literature or dance.
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
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
Research can be a big clunker. It's difficult to know how you can make the historical light.
Michael Ondaatje
In Sri Lanka a well-told lie is worth a thousand facts.
Michael Ondaatje
I see the poem or the novel ending with an open door.
Michael Ondaatje
I don't see novels ending with any real sense of closure.
Michael Ondaatje
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
