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Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje Quotes

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Famous Michael Ondaatje Quotes

“You are doing something over here and over there someone is telling you a joke, or giving you an important piece of information about sanitation, and no matter how weird the other subject is, there is a connection, or you can make a connection. I’ve always loved history and history is collage, it is a juxtaposition of the good and the bad and the strange, and how you place those sentences together changes the whole mood of a history.”

GivingImportantTogetherStrangeJokesMoodSanitation
Author:Michael Ondaatje
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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.”

JobsFallGivenDifficultAirEdgesBoatBridgesSolitaryBrushesNo FearRopeOver The EdgeDaredevilPulleys
Book:In the Skin of a Lion: Picador Classic
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“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.”

IfsMenBelieveBookCharacterBodyDiesNamesI BelieveWishRichRelationshipTreeBuildingLoversTasteMen And WomenRiversI Believe InLabelsMapsTribesCavesRichnessRich ManContainingCartography
Author:Michael Ondaatje
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“What he would say, he cannot say to this woman whose openness is like a wound, whose youth is not mortal yet. He cannot alter what he loves most in her, her lack of compromise, where the romance of the poems she loves still sits with ease in the real world. Outside these qualities he knows there is no order in the world.”

KnowsWorldStillsRealRomanceOrderQualityYouthWoundsCompromiseMortalsEaseOpennessReal World
Book:The English Patient
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“You think that you are an iconoclast, but you’re not. You just move, or replace what you cannot have. If you fail at something, you retreat into something else. Nothing changes you.... I left you because I knew I could never change you. You would stand in the room so still sometimes, as if the greatest betrayal of yourself would be to reveal one more inch of your character.”

IfsThinkingStillsSometimesCharacterWould BeMovingLeftRoomsFailingBetrayalBreakupInchesRetreatBreak UpNever Change
Author:Michael Ondaatje
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“…Even the idea of a city never entered his mind. It was as if he had walked under the millimeter of haze just above the inked fibers of a map, that pure zone between land and chart, between distances and legends, between nature and storyteller. The place they had chosen to come to, to be their best selves, to be unconscious of ancestry. Here, apart from the sun compass and the odometer mileage, and the book, he was alone, his own invention. He knew during these times how the mirage worked, the fata morgana, for he was within it.”

IfsMindBookIdeasSelfCitiesSunLandPureDistanceInventionChosenUnconsciousZoneMapsLegendsStorytellerCompassAncestryFiberBest SelfMiragesHazeMileageMorgana
Author:Michael Ondaatje
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“I believe this. When we meet those we fall in love with, there is an aspect of our spirit that is historian, a bit of a pedant who reminisces or remembers a meeting when the other has passed by innocently…but all parts of the body must be ready for the other, all atoms must jump in one direction for desire to occur.”

BelieveBodyRememberSpiritDesireFallI BelieveBitsReadyAspectMeetingsFalling In LoveHistorianAtomsOne DirectionReminiscingParts Of The BodyPedants
Author:Michael Ondaatje
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“She is a woman of honour and smartness whose wild leaves out luck, always taking risks, and there is something in her brow now, that only she can recognize in a mirror. Ideal and idealistic in that shiny dark hair! People fall in love with her. She is a woman I don’t know well enough to hold in my wing, if writers have wings, to harbour for the rest of my life.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWellsEnoughFallDarkRiskHairIdealsMirrorsLuckWingsFalling In LoveHonourBrowsTaking RisksIdealisticHarbourSmartnessDark HairPerfect Woman
Author:Michael Ondaatje
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“Sometimes when she is able to spend the night with him they are wakened by the three minarets of the city beginning their prayers before dawn. He walks with her through the indigo markets that lie between South Cairo and her home. The beautiful songs of faith enter the air like arrows, one minaret answering another, as if passing on a rumor of the two of them as they walk through the cold morning air, the smell of charcoal and hemp already making the air profound. Sinners in a holy city.”

IfsTwoSometimesHomeAbleBeautifulLyingNightSongThreePrayerWalksCitiesMorningAirColdHolyProfoundSouthSmellPassingPassingsDawnSinnerArrowsRumorHempCharcoalCairoIndigoPassing OnMorning AirCold Morning
Author:Michael Ondaatje
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“I love the performance of a craft, whether it is modest or mean-spirited, yet I walk away when discussions of it begin - as if one should ask a gravedigger what brand of shovel he uses or whether he prefers to work at noon or in moonlight. I am interested only in the care taken, and those secret rehearsals behind it. Even if I do not understand fully what is taking place.”

IfsShouldMeanUseCareAsksWalksSecretBehindsTakenPerformancesCraftsBrandsDiscussionModestMoonlightRehearsalNoonSpiritedShovelsMean SpiritedGravediggers
Book:Divisadero
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“For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell.”

WayStoriesFormPiecesOur LivesChildhoodGlassesEchoesRhymeShatteredRefrainMaking UpMonologuesKaleidoscopeRecurrence
Author:Michael Ondaatje
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“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.”

WorldYearsTwoWarThreeRichProtectSmartYears AgoPrivilegeBelongingHonourLockedSmarterTrust MeBeing SmartCivilised
Author:Michael Ondaatje
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