It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow. Michael Ondaatje More Quotes by Michael Ondaatje More Quotes From Michael Ondaatje 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. Michael Ondaatje song morning beautiful Nicholas Temelcoff is famous on the bridge, a daredevil. He is given all the difficult jobs and he takes them. He descends into the air with no fear. He is a solitary. He assembles ropes, brushes the tackle and pulley at his waist, and falls off the bridge like a diver over the edge of a boat. Michael Ondaatje air jobs fall 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. Michael Ondaatje wrists say-anything hands 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. Michael Ondaatje handwriting half names 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 before Canterbury existed, long before battles and treaties quilted Europe and the East ... 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. Michael Ondaatje distance country children Meanwhile with the help of an anecdote I fell in love. Words caravaggio. They have a power. Michael Ondaatje anecdotes helping He came to this country like a torch on fire and he swallowed air as he walked forward and he gave out light Michael Ondaatje light fire country Sleep is a prison for a boy who has friends to meet. Michael Ondaatje prison sleep boys What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Michael Ondaatje important secret interesting For echo is the soul of the voice exciting itself in hollow places. Michael Ondaatje echoes voice soul This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became half her world. Michael Ondaatje cells doors book In the desert the most loved waters, like a lover's name, are carried blue in your hands, enter your throat. One swallows absence. Michael Ondaatje names blue hands I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you. Michael Ondaatje seeing moon If she were a writer she would collect her pencils and notebooks and favourite cat and write in bed. Strangers and lovers would never get past the locked door. Michael Ondaatje notebook cat writing ... the desert, where there is the communal book of moonlight. We were among the rumour of wells. In the palace of winds. Michael Ondaatje desert wind book Water is the exile, carried back in cans and flasks, the ghost between your hands and your mouth. Michael Ondaatje mouths water hands Women want everything of a lover. And too often I would sink below the surface. So armies disappear under sand. And there was her fear of her husband, her belief in her honour, my old desire for self-sufficiency, my disappearances, her suspicions of me, my disbelief that she loved me. The paranoia and claustrophobia of hidden love. Michael Ondaatje army husband self He was a man who wrote, who interpreted the world. Wisdom grew out of being handed just the smallest sliver of emotion. A glance could lead to paragraphs of theory. Michael Ondaatje emotion men world she had a laugh that hinted it had rolled around once or twice in the mud. Michael Ondaatje mud laughing You have to protect yourself from sadness. Sadness is very close to hate. Let me tell you this. This is the thing I learned. If you take in someone else's poison – thinking you can cure them by sharing it – you will instead store it within you. Those men in the desert were smarter than you. They assumed he could be useful. So they saved him, but when he was no longer useful they left him. Michael Ondaatje sadness hate men
