“ Commissioner Harris at the far end stared along the mad pathway. This was his first child and it had already become a murderer. Michael Ondaatje
“ To rest was to receive all aspects of the world without judgment. A bath in the sea, a fuck with a soldier who never knew your name. Tenderness toward the unknown and anonymous, which was tenderness t… Michael Ondaatje
“ The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human. Meander if you want to get to town. Michael Ondaatje
“ Here. Where I am anonymous and alone in a white room with no history and no parading. So I can make something unknown in the shape of this room. Where I am King of Corners. Michael Ondaatje
“ And he loved my mother. I saw him on the last days of his life lift that oil-scented right hand and enter its fingers into her ordered hair and rustle it free of its pins as if he had been offered vel… Michael Ondaatje
“ Read him slowly, dear girl, you must read Kipling slowly. Watch carefully where the commas fall so you can discover the natural pauses. He is a writer who used pen and ink. He looked up from the page… Michael Ondaatje
“ Across the valley, a waterfall stumbles down. In a month or two the really hard rains will come down for eighteen hours a day and that waterfall will once again become tough as a glacier and wash away… Michael Ondaatje
“ In the book the relationship with Katharine and Almasy is sort of only in the patient's mind. Michael Ondaatje
“ That's Anil's path. She grows up in Sri Lanka, goes and gets educated abroad, and through fate or chance gets brought back by the Human Rights Commission to investigate war crimes. Michael Ondaatje
“ 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 p… Michael Ondaatje
“ 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 mov… Michael Ondaatje
“ Because we want to know things, how the pieces fit. Talkers seduce, words direct us into corners. We want more than anything to grow and change. Brave new world. Michael Ondaatje
“ There was a time when I could have slept with his friend Briffa, for instance. Around him the air was always fraught with possibilities. Michael Ondaatje
“ I went mad before he did, you killed everything in me. Kiss me,will you. Stop defending yourself. Michael Ondaatje
“ -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! Michael Ondaatje
“ 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… Michael Ondaatje
