Best Quotes by Michael Ondaatje (Top 10)

  1. She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.
  2. We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.
  3. All I ever wanted was a world without maps.
  4. 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.
  5. Moments before sleep are when she feels most alive, leaping across fragments of the day, bringing each moment into the bed with her like a child with schoolbooks and pencils. The day seems to have no order until these times, which are like a ledger for her, her body full of stories and situations.
  6. A love story is not about those who lost their heart but about those who find that sullen inhabitant who, when it is stumbled upon, means the body can fool no one, can fool nothing"”not the wisdom of sleep or the habit of social graces. It is a consuming of oneself and the past.
  7. Every night I cut out my heart. But in the morning it was full again
  8. Everyone has to scratch on walls somewhere or they go crazy
  9. 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.
  10. Could you fall in love with her if she wasn't smarter than you? I mean, she may not be smarter than you. But isn't it important for you to think she is smarter than you in order to fall in love? Think now.

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