Michael Ondaatje Quotes - Page 2

The Englishman left months ago, Hana, he's with the Bedouin or in some English garden with its phlox and shit.

...sometimes we enter art to hide within it. It is where we can go to save ourselves, where a third-person voice protects us.

But the young sapper was already on his back, the rifle aimed, his eye almost brushing the beards of Noah and Abraham and the variety of demons until he reached the great face and was stilled by it, the face like a spear, wise, unforgiving.

The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.

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.

But nothing is said of the closeness between two people: how they grew in the shade of each other's presence. No one speaks of that exchange of gift and character - the way a person took on and recognized in himself the smile of a lover. Individuals are seen only in the context of these swirling social tides.

What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.