Michael Ondaatje Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Michael Ondaatje's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Novelist Michael Ondaatje's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 174 quotes on this page collected since September 12, 1943! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • What began it all was the bright bone of a dream I could hardly hold onto.

    Dream   Bones  
    Michael Ondaatje (2011). “Running in the Family”, p.19, Vintage
  • For the first forty days a child is given dreams of previous lives. Journeys, winding paths, a hundred small lessons and then the past is erased.

    Dream   Children   Past  
    FaceBook post by Michael Ondaatje from Jul 03, 2011
  • One of the things that happens in novels it's almost like a continual debate with yourself. That's why you're writing the book. It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself.

  • Fathers die.You keep on loving them in any way you can.You can't hide him away in your heart.

    Father   Heart   Way  
    Michael Ondaatje (2011). “The English Patient”, p.265, Vintage
  • 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.

    FaceBook post by Michael Ondaatje from Jan 09, 2013
  • Once I've discovered the story, I might restructure it, maybe move things around, set up a clue that something is going to happen later, but that happens much later in an editorial capacity.

    Moving   Stories   Might  
  • Tell me, is it possible to love someone who is not as smart as you are? ...But isn't it important for you to think she is smarter than you in order to fall in love? ...Why is that? Because we want to know things, how the pieces fit. Talkers seduce, words direct us into corners. We want more than anything to grow and change. Brave new world.

  • Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting.

    Real   Cities   Way  
    Michael Ondaatje (2007). “Vintage Ondaatje”, p.80, Vintage
  • This last night we tear into each other, as if to wound, as if to find the key to everything before morning.

    Morning   Sex   Night  
    FaceBook post by Michael Ondaatje from Oct 31, 2016
  • I am not in love with him, I am in love with ghosts. So is he, he's in love with ghosts.

    Ghost  
  • I often need a limited space. It's like having a house to roam around in and reinvent and have things to happen in, kind of like a French farce. Doors opening, doors closing, new people arriving, and disappearing, and so forth.

    Doors   Space   People  
  • Don't we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it...There are some European words you can never translate properly into another language.

    Long   Forgiving   Desire  
  • She had grown older. And he loved her more now than he had loved her when he understood her better, when she was the product of her parents. What she was now was what she herself had decided to become.

    Michael Ondaatje (2011). “The English Patient”, p.234, A&C Black
  • There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross.

    Michael Ondaatje (2010). “Divisadero”, p.14, Bloomsbury Publishing
  • She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if awaking from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams.

    Dream   Sleep   Years  
    FaceBook post by Michael Ondaatje from Apr 20, 2013
  • A blind lover, don't know what I love till I write it out

    Writing   Lovers   Blind  
  • What night gave Rafael was a formlessness in which everything had a purpose. As if darkness had a hidden musical language.

    Music   Night   Darkness  
    Michael Ondaatje (2010). “Divisadero”, p.57, Bloomsbury Publishing
  • A postcard. Neat handwriting fills the rectangle. Half my days I cannot bear to touch you. The rest of my time I feel like it doesn’t matter if I will ever see you again. It isn’t the morality, it’s how much you can bear. No date. No name attached.

  • There's always been anger in the making of music or literature or dance.

  • Half a page--and the morning is already ancient.

    Morning   Half   Pages  
    Michael Ondaatje (2011). “Running in the Family”, p.15, Vintage
  • all this Beethoven and rain

    Rain  
  • I don't have a plan for a story when I sit down to write. I would get quite bored carrying it out.

    Writing   Bored   Stories  
  • Here. Where I am anonymous and alone in a white room with no history and no parading. So I can make something unknown in the shape of this room. Where I am King of Corners.

    Kings   White   Shapes  
    Michael Ondaatje (2011). “Coming Through Slaughter”, p.70, A&C Black
  • I'm a Canadian citizen. But I always want to feel at home in Sri Lanka. I'm a member of both countries.

  • Love is the use one makes of another.

    Love Is   Use  
  • ...the heart is an organ of fire.

    Love   Heart   Fire  
    Michael Ondaatje (2011). “The English Patient”, p.97, Vintage
  • It's an odd state to be in, blowing the whistle on your home country.

    Country   Home   Odd  
  • I want to die on your chest but not yet she wrote sometime in the 13th century of our love

    Our Love   Want   Century  
    FaceBook post by Michael Ondaatje from Oct 12, 2012
  • All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.

    Michael Ondaatje (2011). “The English Patient”, p.261, Vintage
  • He has been disassembled by her. And if she has brought him to this, what has he brought her to?

    Has Beens   Ifs  
    Michael Ondaatje (2009). “The English Patient: Special Edition”, p.165, A&C Black
Page 1 of 6
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 174 quotes from the Novelist Michael Ondaatje, starting from September 12, 1943! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!