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I don't see novels ending with any real sense of closure.

Michael Ondaatje

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Michael Ondaatje
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: September 12
Author
Novelist
Pedagogue
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Ondaatje
Closure
Ending
Novels
Novel
Sense
Real

More quotes by Michael Ondaatje

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What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.
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I don't have a plan for a story when I sit down to write. I would get quite bored carrying it out.
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For echo is the soul of the voice exciting itself in hollow places.
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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.
Michael Ondaatje
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Sleep is a prison for a boy who has friends to meet.
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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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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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
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People don't write about kids you have to give them a lot of freedom, and that causes anarchy and that causes farce.
Michael Ondaatje
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Right now, I have no idea what I will write or if I will write again.
Michael Ondaatje
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Research can be a big clunker. It's difficult to know how you can make the historical light.
Michael Ondaatje
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I see the poem or the novel ending with an open door.
Michael Ondaatje
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We keep wanting to save those who are forlorn in this world. It’s a male habit.
Michael Ondaatje
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How we are almost nothing. We think, in our youth, we are the centre of the universe, but we simply respond, go this way or that by accident, survive or improve by the luck of the draw, with little choice or determination on our part.
Michael Ondaatje
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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.
Michael Ondaatje
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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.
Michael Ondaatje
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all this Beethoven and rain
Michael Ondaatje
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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.
Michael Ondaatje
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The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.
Michael Ondaatje
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The past is still, for us, a place that is not safely settled.
Michael Ondaatje