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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.

Michael Ondaatje

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Michael Ondaatje
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 12
Author
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Ondaatje
House
Home
Lanka
Country
Canadian
Feel
Citizen
Feels
Member
Always
Countries
Members
Citizens

More quotes by Michael Ondaatje

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A blind lover, don't know what I love till I write it out
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Githa Hariharan's fiction is wonderful-full of subtleties and humor and tenderness.
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Death means you are in the third person.
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There's a lot of thievery involved in writing. You're breaking into other people's spaces and other people's stories.
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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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All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.
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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.
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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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...sometimes we enter art to hide within it. It is where we can go to save ourselves, where a third-person voice protects us.
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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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Some events take a lifetime to reveal their damage and influence.
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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.
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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.
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I don't see novels ending with any real sense of closure.
Michael Ondaatje
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I think precision in writing goes hand in hand with not trying to say everything. You try and say two-thirds, so the reader will involve himself or herself.
Michael Ondaatje
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Moments before sleep are when she feels most alive, leaping across fragments of the day, bringing each moment into the bed with her like a child with schoolbooks and pencils. The day seems to have no order until these times, which are like a ledger for her, her body full of stories and situations.
Michael Ondaatje
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A novel is a mirror walking down a road
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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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Come. We must go deeper with no justice and no jokes.
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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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