Quote

I am someone who has a cold heart. If I am beside a great grief I throw barriers up so the loss cannot go too deep or too far. There is a wall instantly in place, and it will not fall.

Michael Ondaatje

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Michael Ondaatje
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 12
Author
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Ondaatje
Wall
Cold
Instantly
Fall
Beside
Place
Barriers
Cannot
Throw
Someone
Grief
Great
Loss
Heart
Deep

More quotes by Michael Ondaatje

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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.
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A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands knowing it is something more than water. There is a plant whose heart, if one cuts it out is replaced with fluid containing herbal goodness. Every morning one can drink the liquid amount of the missing heart.
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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.
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She had always wanted words, she loved them grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.
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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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That's one of the great sadnesses of any life - knowing what you know now and then remembering what you did not know then.
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It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself.
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All I ever wanted was a world without maps.
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There's always been anger in the making of music or literature or dance.
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Here. Where I am anonymous and alone in a white room with no history and no parading. So I can make something unknown in the shape of this room. Where I am King of Corners.
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You want to suggest something new, but at the same time, resolve the drama of the action in the novel.
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.
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Death means you are in the third person.
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I want to die on your chest but not yet she wrote sometime in the 13th century of our love
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