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Quote by Michael Ondaatje

Work

The English Patient

The story unfolds through the perspectives of various characters, revealing the patient's past and the secrets surrounding his identity and the events leading up to his injuries. more

Author

Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje

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'. more

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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.”

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Author:Michael Ondaatje
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