373 Quotes by Michael Ondaatje

the lost sequence in a life, they say, is the thing we always search out

This last night we tear into each other, as if to wound, as if to find the key to everything before morning.

He wants the minute and secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book.

The trouble with words is that you can really talk yourself into a corner. You can't fuck yourself into a corner."That's a man talking," muttered Hana.

I am someone who has a cold heart. If I am beside a great grief I throw barriers up so the loss cannot go too deep or too far. There is a wall instantly in place, and it will not fall.

This history of mine,' Herodotus says, 'has from the beginning sought out the supplementary to the main argument.' What you find in him are cul-de-sacs within the sweep of history—how people betray each other for the sake of nations, how people fall in love....

-I think you are inhuman. If I leave you, who will you go to? Would you find another lover?I said nothing.-Deny it,damn you!

In the morning she found pieces of a birdchopped and scattered by the fanblood sprayed onto the mosquito net,its body leaving paths on the wallslike red snails that drifted down in lumps.She could imagine the featherswhile she had sleptfalling around herlike slow rain.

I know the devices of a demon. I was taught as a child about the demon lover. I was told about a beautiful temptress who came to a young man's room. And he, if he were wise, would demand that she turn around, because demons and witches have no back, only what they wish to present to you.