Michael Ondaatje

“...those who had risked everything at a riverbend on a left turn and so discovered a fortune.”

“I love the performance of a craft, whether it is modest or mean-spirited, yet I walk away when discussions of it begin - as if one should ask a gravedigger what brand of shovel he uses or whether he prefers to work at noon or in moonlight. I am interested only in the care taken, and those secret rehearsals behind it. Even if I do not understand fully what is taking place. ”

“How we are almost nothing. We think, in our youth, we are the centre of the universe, but we simply respond, go this way or that by accident, survive or improve by the luck of the draw, with little choice or determination on our part.”

“we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives”

“Her father had taught her about hands. About a dog's paws. Whenever her father was alone with a dog in a house he would lean over and smell the skin at the base of its paw. This, he would say, as if coming away from a brandy snifter, is the greatest smell in the world! A bouquet! Great rumours of travel! She would pretend disgust, but the dog's paw was a wonder: the smell of it never suggested dirt. It's a cathedral! her father had said, so-and-so's garden, that field of grasses, a walk through cyclamen--a concentration of hints of all the paths the animal had taken during the day.”

“The event that will light the way for immigration in North America is the talking picture. The silent film brings nothing but entertainment—a pie in the face, a fop being dragged by a bear out of a department store—all events governed by fate and timing, not language and argument. The tramp never changes the opinion of the policeman. The truncheon swings, the tramp scuttles through a corner window and disturbs the fat lady’s ablutions. These comedies are nightmares. The audience emits horrified laughter as Chaplin, blindfolded, rollerskates near the edge of the unbalconied mezzanine. No one shouts to warn him. He cannot talk or listen. North America is still without language, gestures and work and bloodlines are the only currency.”

“The joyful will stoop with sorrow, and when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion”

“We own the country we grow up in, or we are aliens and invaders.”

“She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if awaking from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams.”

“The desert could not be claimed or owned–it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names... Its caravans, those strange rambling feasts and cultures, left nothing behind, not an ember. All of us, even those with European homes and children in the distance, wished to remove the clothing of our countries. It was a place of faith. We disappeared into landscape.”

“In Canada pianos needed water. You opened up the back and left a full glass of water, and a month later the glass would be empty. Her father had told her about the dwarfs who drank only at pianos, never in bars.”

“A postcard. Neat handwriting fills the rectangle.Half my days I cannot bear to touch you.The rest of my time I feel like it doesn’t matter if I will ever see you again. It isn’t the morality, it’s how much you can bear.No date. No name attached.”

“So the books for the Englishman, as he listened intently or not, hadgaps of plot like sections of a road washed out by storms, missingincidents as if locusts had consumed a section of tapestry, as ifplaster loosened by the bombing had fallen away from a mural at night.”

“And as the music ended, he saw her, like a woman in a romance, pull from her cotton sleeve a note that she pushed into his breast pocket. It would burn there unread for another hour as he danced and talked with in-laws who did not matter to him, who got in the way, whose bloodline connection to him or his wife he could not care less about. Everything that was important to him existed suddenly in the potency of Marie-Neige. He could tell what the shallow freize of the wedding party that surrounded them would continue to be, and yet the one he knew best-he could not conceive how she would behave or respond to him in a week, or even in an hour. She had stepped into more than his arms for a dance, had waited for the precise seconds so it was possible and socially forgivable-the sunlit wedding procession, the eternal meal-and she had passed him a billet-doux as if they were within a Dumas. The note she had written said 'Good-bye.' Then it said 'Hello.' And then it reminded him that 'A message sent by pigeon to The Hague can sometimes change everything.' She had, like one of those partially villainous and always evolving heroines, turned his heart over on the wrong day.”

“A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands knowing it is something that feeds him more than water. There is a plant he knows of near El Taj, whose heart, if one cuts it out, is replaced with a fluid containing herbal goodness. Every morning one can drink the liquid the amount of a missing heart.”

“He has been disassembled by her. And if she has brought him to this, what has he brought her to?”

“Sometimes when she is able to spend the night with him they are wakened by the three minarets of the city beginning their prayers before dawn. He walks with her through the indigo markets that lie between South Cairo and her home. The beautiful songs of faith enter the air like arrows, one minaret answering another, as if passing on a rumor of the two of them as they walk through the cold morning air, the smell of charcoal and hemp already making the air profound. Sinners in a holy city.”

“Her hand touched me at the wrist. "If I gave you my life, you would drop it. Wouldn't you?"I didn't say anything.”

“A novel is a mirror walking down a road”

“July 1936There are betrayals in war that are childlike compared with our human betrayals during peace. The new lover enters the habits of the other. Things are smashed, revealed in new light. This is done with nervous or tender sentences, although the heart is an organ of fire.A love story is not about those who lose 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.”

“As I prepare to leave she walks with me, half deaf and blind, under several ladders in her living room that balance paint and workmen, into the garden where there is a wild horse, a 1930 car splayed flat on its axles and hundreds of flowering bushes so that her eyes swim out into the dark green and unfocussed purple. There is very little now that separates the house from the garden. Rain and vines and chickens move into the building. Before I leave, she points to a group photograph of a fancy dress party that shows herself and my grandmother Lalla among the crowd. She has looked at it for years and has in this way memorized everyone's place in the picture. She reels off names and laughs at the facial expressions she can no longer see. It has moved, tangible, palpable, into her brain, the way memory invades the present in those who are old, the way gardens invade houses here, the way her tiny body steps into mine as intimate as anything I have witnessed and I have to force myself to be gentle with this frailty in the midst of my embrace.”

“I promised to tell you how one falls in love.”

“Commissioner Harris at the far end stared along the mad pathway. This was his first child and it had already become a murderer.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“She lights a match in the dark hall and moves it onto the wick of the candle. Light lifts itself onto her shoulders. She is on her knees. She puts her hands on her thighs and breathes in the smell of the sulphur. She imagines she slap breathes in light.”

“Everyone has to scratch on walls somewhere or they go crazy”

“The Time Around Scars:A girl whom I've not spoken toor shared coffee with for several yearswrites of an old scar.On her wrist it sleeps, smooth and white,the size of a leech.I gave it to herbrandishing a new Italian penknife.Look, I said turning,and blood spat onto her shirt.My wife has scars like spread raindropson knees and ankles,she talks of broken greenhouse panesand yet, apart from imagining red feet,(a nymph out of Chagall)I bring little to that scene.We remember the time around scars,they freeze irrelevant emotionsand divide us from present friends.I remember this girl's face,the widening rise of surprise.And would shemoving with lover or husbandconceal or flaunt it,or keep it at her wrista mysterious watch.And this scar I then rememberis a medallion of no emotion.I would meet you nowand I would wish this scarto have been given withall the lovethat never occurred between us. ”

“All I ever wanted was a world without maps.”

“Come. We must go deeper with no justice and no jokes.”

“Why are you not smarter? It's only the rich who can't afford to be smart. They're compromised. They got locked years ago into privilege. They have to protect their belongings. No one is meaner than the rich. Trust me. But they have to follow the rules of their shitty civilised world. They declare war, they have honour, and they can't leave. But you two. We three. We're free.”

“I believe in such cartography – to be marked by nature, not just label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. ... All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.”

“From this point on, she whispered, we will either find or lose our souls.”

“Every night I cut out my heart. But in the morning it was full again”

“There is a whirlwind in southern Morocco, the aajej, against which the fellahin defend themselves with knives. There is the africo, which has at times reached into the city of Rome. The alm, a fall wind out of Yugoslavia. The arifi, also christened aref or rifi, which scorches with numerous tongues. These are permanent winds that live in the present tense.There are other, less constant winds that change direction, that can knock down horse and rider and realign themselves anticlockwise. The bist roz leaps into Afghanistan for 170 days--burying villages. There is the hot, dry ghibli from Tunis, which rolls and rolls and produces a nervous condition. The haboob--a Sudan dust storm that dresses in bright yellow walls a thousand metres high and is followed by rain. The harmattan, which blows and eventually drowns itself into the Atlantic. Imbat, a sea breeze in North Africa. Some winds that just sigh towards the sky. Night dust storms that come with the cold. The khamsin, a dust in Egypt from March to May, named after the Arabic word for 'fifty,' blooming for fifty days--the ninth plague of Egypt. The datoo out of Gibraltar, which carries fragrance.There is also the ------, the secret wind of the desert, whose name was erased by a king after his son died within it. And the nafhat--a blast out of Arabia. The mezzar-ifoullousen--a violent and cold southwesterly known to Berbers as 'that which plucks the fowls.' The beshabar, a black and dry northeasterly out of the Caucasus, 'black wind.' The Samiel from Turkey, 'poison and wind,' used often in battle. As well as the other 'poison winds,' the simoom, of North Africa, and the solano, whose dust plucks off rare petals, causing giddiness.Other, private winds.Travelling along the ground like a flood. Blasting off paint, throwing down telephone poles, transporting stones and statue heads. The harmattan blows across the Sahara filled with red dust, dust as fire, as flour, entering and coagulating in the locks of rifles. Mariners called this red wind the 'sea of darkness.' Red sand fogs out of the Sahara were deposited as far north as Cornwall and Devon, producing showers of mud so great this was also mistaken for blood. 'Blood rains were widely reported in Portugal and Spain in 1901.'There are always millions of tons of dust in the air, just as there are millions of cubes of air in the earth and more living flesh in the soil (worms, beetles, underground creatures) than there is grazing and existing on it. Herodotus records the death of various armies engulfed in the simoom who were never seen again. One nation was 'so enraged by this evil wind that they declared war on it and marched out in full battle array, only to be rapidly and completely interred.”

“Don’t we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it.”

“Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting.”

“Беше времето на небесната война."...Нейният баща и беше разправял за ръцете. И за кучешките лапи. Винаги, когато оставаше насаме с някое куче, той се навеждаше и помирисваше кожата на стъпалата му. "Тази миризма - обичаше да казва, сякаш описваше аромата на глътка бренди - е най-великата на света! Букет! Полъх от грандиозни пътешествия." Тя се преструваше на погнусена, но кучешката лапа си оставаше едно чудо - никога не лъхаше на мръсотия. "Като катедрала! - бе възкликнал баща й. - Може би лъх от тази или онази градина, от зелена поляна или от цикламена леха - досущ смес-концентрат от всички обходени през дена пътеки."...Спалните бяха притихнали като тъмни джобове на златен костюм."...На зазоряване, когато се промъкваше вкъщи, тя го намираше заспал в креслото на баща й, изтощен от професионални и лични грабежи. Тя мислешеза Караваджо. Има такива хора, просто трябва да се вкопчиш в тях, да се впиеш в плътта им, за да не полудееш в тяхната компания."...В Канада пианото не може без вода. Отваря се капакът и се оставя чша вода. След месец чашата е празна."...В пустинята водата е обичана като жена - изтичащ между пръстите лазур, чийто капки галят гърлото като звуци от любимо име. Поглъщаш нечие отсъствие. На жена. В Кайро. Бели, протяжни извивки на надигащо се от леглото тяло - тя се надвесва през прозореца и дъждът попива в голата й плът."...Тя го мразеше, когато говореше така. Тогава погледът й ставаше любезен, а вътрешно изпитваше желание да го зашлеви. Винаги бе искала да го зашлеви и осъзнаваше сексуалността на този акт."...Красивите песни на вярата пронизват въздуха като стрели, минаретата разговарят, сякаш разнасят слуха за любовниците, които вървят в студения утринен въздух, наситен с миризмата на дървени въглища и хашиш. Грешници в свещен град."...От този миг нататък, бе му пошушнала тя преди, или ще намерим душите си, или ще ги изгубим."...Как се случи това? Да се влюбя и да се разчленя.Бях в ръцете й. Бях дръпнал ръкава на ризата до рамото, за да ивдя белега от ваксина. Обичам го, казах. Този блед ореол на нейната ръка. Виждам как спринцовката чертае драскотина. Пробив - и срумът прониква. Това се е случилоотдавна, когато е била на девет години, в салона за физкултура.”

“Everything is biographical, Lucian Freud says. What we make, why it is made, how we draw a dog, who it is we are drawn to, why we cannot forget. Everything is collage, even genetics. There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border we cross.”

“But we were interested in how our lives could mean something to the past. We sailed into the past.”

“A blind lover, don't knowwhat I love till I write it out”

“She is a woman of honour and smartness whose wild leaves out luck, always taking risks, and there is something in her brow now, that only she can recognize in a mirror. Ideal and idealistic in that shiny dark hair! People fall in love with her. She is a woman I don’t know well enough to hold in my wing, if writers have wings, to harbour for the rest of my life.”

“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.”

“…Even the idea of a city never entered his mind. It was as if he had walked under the millimeter of haze just above the inked fibers of a map, that pure zone between land and chart, between distances and legends, between nature and storyteller. The place they had chosen to come to, to be their best selves, to be unconscious of ancestry. Here, apart from the sun compass and the odometer mileage, and the book, he was alone, his own invention. He knew during these times how the mirage worked, the fata morgana, for he was within it.”

“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.”

“She had grown older. And he loved her more now than he had loved her when he understood her better, when she was the product of her parents. What she was now was what she herself had decided to become.”

“You think that you are an iconoclast, but you’re not. You just move, or replace what you cannot have. If you fail at something, you retreat into something else. Nothing changes you.... I left you because I knew I could never change you. You would stand in the room so still sometimes, as if the greatest betrayal of yourself would be to reveal one more inch of your character.”

“What he would say, he cannot say to this woman whose openness is like a wound, whose youth is not mortal yet. He cannot alter what he loves most in her, her lack of compromise, where the romance of the poems she loves still sits with ease in the real world. Outside these qualities he knows there is no order in the world.”

“He knows that the only way he can accept losing her is if he can continue to hold her or be held by her. If they can somehow nurse each other out of this. Not with a wall.”