373 Quotes by Michael Ondaatje

Nothing lasts. Not even literary or artistic fame protects worldly things around us.

The Darter must have been amazed by such rules and beliefs in a pregnant seventeen-year-old girl who would go on to cordon off the bad habits of his life so efficiently.

The heart is an organ of fire.

We need parents when we’re old too.

You did not speak for some time. You felt safer that way.

It’s a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow.

A man not of your own blood can break upon your emotions more than someone of your own blood.

That’s one of the great sadnesses of any life – knowing what you know now and then remembering what you did not know then.

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 my body when I am dead.