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Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje Books

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Divisadero

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The Cat's Table

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Warlight

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Anil's Ghost

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Handwriting

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Vintage Ondaatje

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“But there was a discipline, it was just that we didn't understand. We thought he was formless, but I think now he was tormented by order, what was outside it. He tore apart the plot - see his music was immediately on top of his own life. Echoing. As if, when he was playing he was lost and hunting for the right accidental notes. Listening to him was like talking to Coleman. You were both changing direction with every sentence, sometimes in the middle, using each other as a springboard through the dark. You were moving so fast it was unimportant to finish and clear everything. He would be describing something in 27 ways. There was pain and gentleness everything jammed into each number.”

Music
Book:Coming Through Slaughter
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“My darling, I'm waiting for you — how long is a day in the dark, or a week? The fire is gone now, and I'm horribly cold. I really ought to drag myself outside but then there would be the sun. . . I'm afraid I waste the light on the paintings and on writing these words. We die, we die rich with lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have entered and swum up like rivers, fears we have hidden in, like this wretched cave. We are the real countries, not the boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men. I know you will come and carry me out into the palace of winds. That's all I've wanted — to walk in such a place with you, with friends, on earth without maps...”

LoveLifeDeathFriendship
Book:The English Patient
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“I have been seeing dragons again. Last night, hunched on a beaver dam, one held a body like a badly held cocktail; his tail, keeping the beat of a waltz, sent a morse of ripples to my canoe. They are not richly bright but muted like dawns or the vague sheen on a fly's wing. Their old flesh drags in folds as they drop into grey pools, strain behind a tree. Finally the others saw one today, trapped, tangled in our badminton net. The minute eyes shuddered deep in the creased face while his throat, strangely fierce, stretched to release an extinct burning inside: pathetic loud whispers as four of us and the excited spaniel surrounded him.”

HumourMagic RealismDomestic LifeMythical Beasts
Book:The Dainty Monsters
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“Julguei que ia morrer. Queria morrer. E julguei que se fosse morrer ia morrer contigo. Rapazes como tu, jovens como eu…vi morrer tantos ao pé de mim durante o ano passado! Não tive medo nenhum. Não foi coragem o que ainda agora me fez ficar aqui. Pensei com os meus botões: "Temos esta cama, esta erva, devíamos ter-nos deitado juntados, abraçados, antes de morrer". Apeteceu-me tocar-te nesse osso do pescoço, a clavícula, que parece uma asa pequena e dura debaixo da pele. Apeteceu-me afagá-la com os dedos. Sempre gostei de corpos da cor dos rios e das pedras, da cor do olho castanho de uma susana, conheces essa flor? Já viste alguma? Estou tão cansada Kip, só me apetece dormir. Apetece-me dormir debaixo desta árvore, de cara encostada à tua clavícula, apetece-me fechar os olhos, sem pensar em mais ninguém, encontrar um nicho de árvore, trepar lá para dentro e dormir. Que espírito meticuloso! Saber que fio hás de cortar. Como é que soubeste? Foste dizendo não sei, não sei, mas sabias. Não foi? Não tremas, tens de ser uma cama sossegada para mim, deixa-me aninhar-me, abraçar-te como se fosses um avozinho, adiro a palavra "aninhar", tão lenta, não se pode apressá-la.”

QuotesProsePoeticLiteraturaOndaatje
Book:The English Patient
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“He walked out of the hospital into the sun, into open air for the first time in months, out of the green-lit rooms that lay like glass in his mind. He stood there breathing everything in, the hurry of everyone. First, he thought, I need shoes with rubber on the bottom. I need gelato.”

NeedsMindFirstsRoomsSunAirFoodMonthsFirst TimeGreenCookingLaysBottomShoesGlassesBreathingCulinaryHospitalsLitRubberGelato
Book:The English Patient
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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.”

MovingFallSoundEmotionWonderEarsThirdsWitSensualityWitnessCategoriesComposerAnglePrimalSlapstick
Author:Michael Ondaatje
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“You can see that the care he took defiling the beauty he had forced in them was as precise and clean as his good hands which at night had developed the negatives, floating the sheets in the correct acids and watching the faces and breasts and pubic triangles and sofas emerge. The making and destroying coming from the same source, same lust, same surgery his brain was capable of. (On New Orleans photographer E. J. Bellocq)”

HandsCareFacesNightBrainSourceCapableCleanPhotographerLustBreastsDestroyingSurgeryPreciseSheetsFloatingNew OrleansAcidSofasTriangles
Book:Coming Through Slaughter
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