373 Quotes by Michael Ondaatje

Half a page – and the morning is already ancient.

In 1945 our parents went away and left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals.

Just as no score relies on only one pitch or level of effort from musicians in the orchestra. Sometimes it relies on silence.

But there was a discipline, it was just that we didn’t understand. We thought he was formless, but I think now he was tormented by order, what was outside it. He tore apart the plot – see his music was immediately on top of his own life. Echoing. As if, when he was playing he was lost and hunting for the right accidental notes.

It is important to die in holy places. That was one of the secrets of the desert. So Madox walked into a church in Somerset, a place he felt had lost its holiness, and he committed what he believed was a holy act.

In 1942 the Germans sent a spy called Eppler into Cairo before the battle of El Alamein. He used a copy of Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca as a code book to send messages back to Rommel on troop movements. Listen, the book became bedside reading with British Intelligence. Even I read it.

It’s why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself.

Could you waste your life on a gift? If you did not use your gift, was it a betrayal?

There’s always been anger in the making of music or literature or dance.