Michael Ondaatje quotes - page 3

To write about someone like myself would be very limiting. (Michael Ondaatje)
As a writer, one is busy with archaeology. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
You want to suggest something new, but at the same time, resolve the drama of the action in the novel. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
You don't want to write your own opinion, you don't want to just represent yourself, but represent yourself through someone else. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
Right now, I have no idea what I will write or if I will write again. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
You're getting everyone's point of view at the same time, which, for me, is the perfect state for a novel: a cubist state, the cubist novel. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
I see the poem or the novel ending with an open door. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
I tend not to know what the plot is or the story is or even the theme. Those things come later, for me. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
It's a discovery of a story when I write a book, a case of inching ahead on each page and discovering what's beyond in the darkness, beyond where you're writing. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
It's an odd state to be in, blowing the whistle on your home country. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
Once I've discovered the story, I might restructure it, maybe move things around, set up a clue that something is going to happen later, but that happens much later in an editorial capacity. (Michael Ondaatje)
When you're writing, it's as if you're within a kind of closed world. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
I'm a Canadian citizen. But I always want to feel at home in Sri Lanka. I'm a member of both countries. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
I don't have a plan for a story when I sit down to write. I would get quite bored carrying it out. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
Research can be a big clunker. It's difficult to know how you can make the historical light. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
I don't see novels ending with any real sense of closure. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
In the book the relationship with Katharine and Almasy is sort of only in the patient's mind. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
Don't we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if awaking from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
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)
Why are you not smarter? It's only the rich who can't afford to be smart. They're compromised. They got locked years ago into privilege. They have to protect their belongings. No one is meaner than the rich. Trust me. But they have to follow the rules of their shitty civilised world. They declare war, they have honour, and they can't leave. But you two. We three. We're free. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
Don't we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it...There are some European words you can never translate properly into another language. View quote
Michael Ondaatje
Nowadays he doesn't think of his wife, though he knows he can turn around and evoke every move of her, describe any aspect of her, the weigh of her wrist on his heart during the night. View quote
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. View quote
Michael Ondaatje