List of Michael Ondaatje Quotes

I Kind Of Was Shoveled Onto A Boat At 11 And Went To England. I Didn't Have Any Parent Watching Over Me. It Was Very Free And May Have Been A Bit Of A Scary Time For Me, But I Really Don't Remember Much About The Voyage Apart From Playing Ping-pong A Lot With A Couple Friends.

People Don't Write About Kids; You Have To Give Them A Lot Of Freedom, And That Causes Anarchy And That Causes Farce.

There's A Lot Of Thievery Involved In Writing. You're Breaking Into Other People's Spaces And Other People's Stories.

If You Look At Japanese Film, It Is Made Up Of Collage Or Bricolage, It Is Made Up Of Lists, And Suddenly When You Stand Back From The Lists You Begin To See The Pattern Of A Life.

Politically I Also Don't Believe Anymore That We Can Only Have One Voice To A Story, It's Like Having One Radio Station To Represent A Country. You Want The Politics Of Any Complicated Situation To Be Complicated In A Book Of Fiction Or Nonfiction.

When I Read Biographies, I Skip The First Thirty Pages About The Childhood Because It Doesn't Seem Interesting To Me.

The One Of The Great Sadnesses Of Any Life Is Knowing What You Know Now And Then Remembering What You Did Not Know Then.

Politically I Don't Believe Anymore That We Can Only Have One Voice To A Story, It's Like Having One Radio Station To Represent A Country.

In The Desert The Most Loved Waters, Like A Lover's Name, Are Carried Blue In Your Hands, Enter Your Throat. One Swallows Absence.

But We Were Interested In How Our Lives Could Mean Something To The Past. We Sailed Into The Past.

I Am Not In Love With Him, I Am In Love With Ghosts. So Is He, He's In Love With Ghosts.

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.