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So many nurses had turned into emotionally disturbed handmaidens of the war, in their yellow-and-crimson uniforms with bone buttons.

Michael Ondaatje

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Michael Ondaatje
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 12
Author
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Ondaatje
Many
Uniforms
Buttons
Emotionally
Nurse
Handmaidens
Yellow
Nurses
Bones
Crimson
Turned
Disturbed
War
Bone

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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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We keep wanting to save those who are forlorn in this world. It’s a male habit.
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Sadness is very close to hate.
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It's an odd state to be in, blowing the whistle on your home country.
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I'm a Canadian citizen. But I always want to feel at home in Sri Lanka. I'm a member of both countries.
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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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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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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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Come. We must go deeper with no justice and no jokes.
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I see the poem or the novel ending with an open door.
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Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting.
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she had a laugh that hinted it had rolled around once or twice in the mud.
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What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.
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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.
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You don't want to write your own opinion, you don't want to just represent yourself, but represent yourself through someone else.
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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.
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A writer uses a pen instead of a scalpel or blow torch.
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Fathers die.You keep on loving them in any way you can.You can't hide him away in your heart.
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Nicholas Temelcoff is famous on the bridge, a daredevil. He is given all the difficult jobs and he takes them. He descends into the air with no fear. He is a solitary. He assembles ropes, brushes the tackle and pulley at his waist, and falls off the bridge like a diver over the edge of a boat.
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As a writer, one is busy with archaeology.
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