“ 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 cult… Michael Ondaatje
“ Aliganaya - 'the embraceduring an intoxicated walk'or 'sudden arousalwhile driving over speed bumps Michael Ondaatje
“ Jung was absolutely right about one thing. We are occupied by gods. The mistake is to identify with the god occupying you. Michael Ondaatje
“ Nowadays he doesn't think of his wife, though he knows he can turn around and evoke every move of her, describe any aspect of her, the weigh of her wrist on his heart during the night. Michael Ondaatje
“ 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. Michael Ondaatje
“ I have spent weeks in the desert, forgetting to look at the moon, he says, as a married man may spend days never looking into the face of his wife. These are not sins of omission but signs of pre-occu… Michael Ondaatje
“ This last night we tear into each other, as if to wound, as if to find the key to everything before morning. Michael Ondaatje
“ 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 beca… Michael Ondaatje
“ I was a man fifteen years older than she, you understand. I had reached that stage in life where I identified with cynical villains in a book. Michael Ondaatje
“ He refused to believe in his own weaknesses, and with her he had not found a weakness to fit himself against. Michael Ondaatje
“ I am not in love with him, I am in love with ghosts. So is he, he's in love with ghosts. Michael Ondaatje
“ But his own mind was helpless against every moment's headline. He did nothing but leap into the mass of changes and explore them and all the tiny facets so eventually he was completely governed by fea… Michael Ondaatje
“ 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 ima… Michael Ondaatje
“ ...how many of us have a moved heart that shies away to a different angle, a millimetre or even less from the place where it first existed, some repositioning unknown to us. Michael Ondaatje
“ 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 ch… Michael Ondaatje
“ 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. Michael Ondaatje
“ I once traveled with a guide who was taking me to Faya. He didn't speak for nine hours. At the end of it he pointed to the horizon and said, 'Faya!' That was a good day. Michael Ondaatje
