Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje
Philip Michael Ondaatje, OC, is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist and poet. He won the Booker Prize for his novel The English Patient, which was adapted as the 1996 film of the same name...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth12 September 1943
CountryCanada
husband army self
Women want everything of a lover. And too often I would sink below the surface. So armies disappear under sand. And there was her fear of her husband, her belief in her honour, my old desire for self-sufficiency, my disappearances, her suspicions of me, my disbelief that she loved me. The paranoia and claustrophobia of hidden love.
wall hands people
Some people you just had to embrace, in some way or another, had to bite into the muscle, to remain sane in their company. You needed to grab their hand and clutch it like a downer so they would pull you into their midst. Otherwise they, walking casually down the street towards you, almost about to wave, would leap over a wall and be gone for months.
mistake jung one-thing
Jung was absolutely right about one thing. We are occupied by gods. The mistake is to identify with the god occupying you.
country light air
He came to this country like a torch on fire and he swallowed air as he walked forward and he gave out light
dark reflection skeletons
He turns his back to the far shore and rows toward it. He can in this way travel away from, yet still see, his house....he feels he is riding a floating skeleton...Some birds in the almost-dark are flying as close to their reflections as possible.
father piano glasses
In Canada pianos needed water. You opened up the back and left a full glass of water, and a month later the glass would be empty. Her father had told her about the dwarfs who drank only at pianos, never in bars.
rain
all this Beethoven and rain
moon seeing
I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you.
notebook cat writing
If she were a writer she would collect her pencils and notebooks and favourite cat and write in bed. Strangers and lovers would never get past the locked door.
events damage influence
Some events take a lifetime to reveal their damage and influence.
names lovers
There was a time when mapmakers named the places they travelled through with the names of lovers rather than their own.
betrayal war heart
There are betrayals in war that are childlike compared with our human betrayals during peace. The new lovers enter the habits of the other. Things are smashed, revealed in a new light. This is done with nervous or tender sentences, although the heart is an organ of fire.
love heart fire
...the heart is an organ of fire.
water desert celebrate
In the desert you celebrate nothing but water.