When you're writing, it's as if you're within a kind of closed world. — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
Right now, I have no idea what I will write or if I will write again. — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow. — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
Githa Hariharan's fiction is wonderful-full of subtleties and humor and tenderness. — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
I don't have a plan for a story when I sit down to write. I would get quite bored carrying it out. — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
There's a lot of thievery involved in writing. You're breaking into other people's spaces and other people's stories. — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
It's a discovery of a story when I write a book, a case of inching ahead on each page and discovering what's… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
When I write my novels I don't really have a huge plan beforehand; I don't have the whole plot and architecture, so… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
If she were a writer she would collect her pencils and notebooks and favourite cat and write in bed. Strangers and lovers… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
The last three books are much more a case of a moment of history, what happened almost by accident or coincidence, like… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
I think precision in writing goes hand in hand with not trying to say everything. You try and say two-thirds, so the… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
As someone who writes novels that are often set in other periods of time or other ages or other landscapes, there's a… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
Once I've discovered the story, I might restructure it, maybe move things around, set up a clue that something is going to… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
“Many books open with an author's assurance of order. One slipped into their waters with a silent paddle...But novels commenced with hesitation… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
“He wants the minute and secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
I see myself as someone who's been saved by writing. God knows what I would have been, become or how I would… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
“In spite of this, our table's status on the Oronsay continued to be minimal, while those at the Captain's Table were constantly toasting to… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
He will hear the rain before he feels it, a clicking on the dry grass, on the olive leaves. — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
“Whenever her father was alone with a dog in a house he would lean over and smell the skin at the base of its… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
“...those who had risked everything at a riverbend on a left turn and so discovered a fortune.” — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
“All over the world there must be people like us, Anna had said then, wounded in some way by falling in love - seemingly… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
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… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
From this point on, she whispered, we will either find or lose our souls. — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
“You know it is the most relaxed thing when you when you sit with a best friend and you know there is nothing you… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
“There was no control except the " mood of his power... and it is for this reason it is good you never heard him… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
You're getting everyone's point of view at the same time, which for me, is the perfect state for a novel: a cubist state, the… — Michael Ondaatje Copy Share Image
