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Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje Quotes

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Famous Michael Ondaatje Quotes

“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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“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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“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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“Her father had taught her about hands. About a dog's paws. Whenever her father was alone with a dog in a house he would lean over and smell the skin at the base of its paw. This, he would say, as if coming away from a brandy snifter, is the greatest smell in the world! A bouquet! Great rumours of travel! She would pretend disgust, but the dog's paw was a wonder: the smell of it never suggested dirt. It's a cathedral! her father had said, so-and-so's garden, that field of grasses, a walk through cyclamen--a concentration of hints of all the paths the animal had taken during the day.”

IfsWorldSaidHandsFatherHouseWalksAnimalWonderPathTakenDogFieldsTaughtGardenSkinsSmellGrassConcentrationDisgustingDirtHintsCathedralsPawsRumoursBouquetsBrandy
Book:The English Patient
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“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.”

IfsThinkingMenHateLeftSadnessProtectLet MeStoresSavedCuresDesertPoisonWithin YouSmarterProtect Yourself
Author:Michael Ondaatje
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“If any of you on your journeys see her-shout to me, whistle...he sang, and it became a habit for audiences to shout and whistle in response to those lines. There was nowhere he could hide in such a song that had all of its doors and windows open, so that he could walk out of it artlessly, the antiphonal responses blending with him as if he were no longer on stage.”

IfsSongLinesWalksMusicAudienceDoorsJourneyStageHabitWindowResponse
Book:Divisadero
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“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.”

IfsWayYearsStillsEnoughMightCertainThreeHouseGivenBornAnimalNumbersHalfStrangeBrokenBirdCrossesWelcomeDesertPetQuartersRoofWoundedExoticFourteenRadius
Book:The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
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