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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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Michael Ondaatje
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 12
Author
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
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Ondaatje
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Stories
Clearer
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More quotes by Michael Ondaatje
I want to die on your chest but not yet she wrote sometime in the 13th century of our love
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
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.
Michael Ondaatje
All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.
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
There's more danger in the violence you don't face.
Michael Ondaatje
For echo is the soul of the voice exciting itself in hollow places.
Michael Ondaatje
Sleep is a prison for a boy who has friends to meet.
Michael Ondaatje
What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.
Michael Ondaatje
The joyful will stoop with sorrow, and when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion
Michael Ondaatje
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
She had always wanted words, she loved them grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.
Michael Ondaatje
Sadness is very close to hate.
Michael Ondaatje
So many nurses had turned into emotionally disturbed handmaidens of the war, in their yellow-and-crimson uniforms with bone buttons.
Michael Ondaatje
I don't see novels ending with any real sense of closure.
Michael Ondaatje
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.
Michael Ondaatje
The past is still, for us, a place that is not safely settled.
Michael Ondaatje
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.
Michael Ondaatje
Research can be a big clunker. It's difficult to know how you can make the historical light.
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