All Michael Ondaatje Quotes
- In Sri Lanka a well-told lie is worth a thousand facts. Facts
- 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… All
- What night gave Rafael was a formlessness in which everything had a purpose. As if darkness had a hidden musical language. Darkness
- 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… Almost Like
- 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 cubist… Cubist
- It doubles your perception, to write from the point of view of someone you're not. Doubles
- Half a page--and the morning is already ancient. Ancient
- I see the poem or the novel ending with an open door. Door
- Most of the time in our world, truth is just opinion. Most
- A writer uses a pen instead of a scalpel or blow torch, Blow
- You must talk to me, Caravaggio. Or am I just a book? Something to be read, some creature to be tempted out of a loch… Book
- It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself. Argue
- It's a discovery of a story when I write a book, a case of inching ahead on each page and discovering what's beyond in the… Ahead
- The last three books are much more a case of a moment of history, what happened almost by accident or coincidence, like being in the… Accident
- A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands, knowing it is something that feeds him more than water. Absence
- The rulers of the country generally believed that betting eliminates strikes. Men had to work in order to gamble. Believed
- Kirpal's left hand swoops down and catches the dropped fork an inch from the floor and gently passes it into the fingers of his daughter,… Behind
- So many nurses had turned into emotionally disturbed handmaidens of the war, in their yellow-and-crimson uniforms with bone buttons. Bone
- 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… Around Set
- I'm a Canadian citizen. But I always want to feel at home in Sri Lanka. I'm a member of both countries. Always Want