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Michael Ondaatje Quotes

Novelist

Michael Ondaatje, born on September 12, 1943, is a renowned Canadian novelist. His works are known for their unique narrative style and profound emotional expression, with notable titles including 'In the Skin of a Lion' and 'The English Patient'.

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All Ifs Writing Book Stories Knows Novel Desert Hands Fall Lovers Want World Character Country Heart Love Men Way Names Thinking

Famous Michael Ondaatje Quotes

“-I think you are inhuman. If I leave you, who will you go to? Would you find another lover? I said nothing. -Deny it,damn you!”

Love Romance Novel Desert Michael Ondaatje The English Patient

Book:The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“In the desert you celebrate nothing but water.”

Water Celebrate Desert

Book:The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“I have spent weeks in the desert, forgetting to look at the moon, he says, as a married man may spend days never looking into the face of his wife. These are not sins of omission but signs of pre-occuopation.”

Men Looks May Faces Sin Forget Wife Week Moon Married Desert Omission Married Man

Author:Michael Ondaatje

“The desert could not be claimed or owned — it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names before Canterbury existed, long before battles and treaties quilted Europe and the East ... All of us, even those with European homes and children in the distance, wished to remove the clothing of our countries. It was a place of faith. We disappeared into landscape.”

Children Long Country Home Names Given Pieces Wind Battle Hundred Europe Stones Distance East Our Country Desert Landscape Remove Clothings Shifting Treaties Canterbury

Author:Michael Ondaatje

“Men had always been the reciters of poetry in the desert.”

Men Desert

Book:The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands knowing it is something more than water. There is a plant whose heart, if one cuts it out is replaced with fluid containing herbal goodness. Every morning one can drink the liquid amount of the missing heart.”

Ifs Men Heart Hands Water Morning Knowing Cutting Missing Amount Drink Goodness Plant Absence Desert Every Morning Replaced Fluid Liquid Containing

Author:Michael Ondaatje

“In the desert the most loved waters, like a lover's name, are carried blue in your hands, enter your throat. One swallows absence.”

Hands Names Water Lovers Blue Absence Desert Throat

Book:The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“... the desert, where there is the communal book of moonlight. We were among the rumour of wells. In the palace of winds.”

Wells Book Wind Desert Palaces Moonlight Rumours

Book:The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“You have to protect yourself from sadness. Sadness is very close to hate. Let me tell you this. This is the thing I learned. If you take in someone else's poison – thinking you can cure them by sharing it – you will instead store it within you. Those men in the desert were smarter than you. They assumed he could be useful. So they saved him, but when he was no longer useful they left him.”

Ifs Thinking Men Hate Left Sadness Protect Let Me Stores Saved Cures Desert Poison Within You Smarter Protect Yourself

Author:Michael Ondaatje

“A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands, knowing it is something that feeds him more than water.”

Men Hands Water Knowing Absence Desert

Book:The English Patient: Special Edition

Source: The English Patient: Special Edition

“She had lived in that house fourteen years, and every year she had demanded of John that she be given a pet of some strange exotic breed. Not that she did not have enough animals. She had collected several wild and broken animals that, in a way, had become exotic by their breaking. Their roof would have collapsed from the number of birds who might have lived there if the desert hadn't killed three- quarters of those that tried to cross it. Still every animal that came within a certain radius of that house was given a welcome-the tame, the half born, the wild, the wounded.”

Source: The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

About the Author

Born: September 12, 1943
Known for: Novelist
Quotes: 200

Books & Sources

The English PatientRelated source material

DivisaderoRelated source material

In the Skin of a LionRelated source material

The Cat's TableRelated source material

Running in the FamilyRelated source material

Coming Through SlaughterRelated source material

The English Patient: A NovelRelated source material

The English Patient: Special EditionRelated source material

WarlightRelated source material

Anil's GhostRelated source material

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