Quotes from Michael Ondaatje

For the heavens shall vanish away like smoke and the earth shall wax old like a garment. And they that dwell therein shall die in like manner. For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worms shall eat them like wool.

We were Germans, English, Hungarian, African — all of us insignificant to them. Gradually we became nationless. I came to hate nations. We are deformed by nation-states.

Dinlenmek, dünyay? tüm yönleriyle ama hiç yarg?lamadan kabullenmekti.

Tanr?'n?n Adresi Tanr? sadece çöllerde. Bunun fark?na vard? o gün. Çöllerin d???nda ticaret, ç?kar iliÅŸkileri, güç dengeleri, para ve savaÅŸ vard?.

during the night, in the no-longer-damp path of its stream. Nothing lasts. Not even literary or artistic fame protects worldly

I knew maps of the sea floor, maps that depict weaknesses in the shield of the earth, charts painted on skin that contain the various routes of the Crusades. So

plucked the antlered hat of fire from his head.

He was an autodidact, and he believed his mind could read the motives and spirit behind any invention. He had immediately invented the pocket shirt, which allowed fuzes and gadgets to be stored easily by a working sapper.

paranoid is someone with all the facts, the joke went.

Some rooms could not be entered because of rubble. One bomb crater allowed moon and rain into the library downstairs—

At one point he put his nose close to a volume called Raymond, or Life and Death by Sir Oliver Hodge.

He had come from a country where mathematics and mechanics were natural traits. Cars were never destroyed. Parts of them were carried across a village and readapted into a sewing machine or water pump. The backseat of a Ford was reupholstered and became a sofa. Most people in his village were more likely to carry a spanner or screwdriver than a pencil. A car's irrelevant parts thus entered a grandfather clock or irrigation pulley or the spinning mechanism of an office chair.

But what did we really know, even of one another? We never thought of a future. Our small solar system - what was it heading towards? And how long would each of us mean something to the others?

our way up a narrowing cut. It was a different atmosphere

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

She finds rest as opposed to sleep the truly pleasurable state.

She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance.

By August the blitz had begun, and in one month there were suddenly 2,500 unexploded bombs to be dealt with. Roads were closed, factories deserted. By September the number of live bombs had reached 3,700. One hundred new bomb squads were set up, but there was still no understanding of how the bombs worked. Life expectancy in these units was ten weeks.

The year is 194-. What? For a second I forget. But I know the month and the day. One day after we heard the bombs were dropped in Japan, so it feels like the end of the world. From now on I believe the personal will forever be at war with the public. If we can rationalize this we can rationalize anything.

sister's epilepsy. By the time I began working with him the golden years of doping were almost over. Thirty-four million people were attending greyhound races a year. But now the racing clubs were setting up saliva and urine tests, so The Darter needed to find another solution where betting on dogs would once again not rely only on logic and talent. What followed was The Darter's use of imposters or ringers in order to bring confusion and chance back to the

I have to teach myself not to read too much into everything. It comes from too long having to read so much into hardly anything at all.

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.

Who lays the crumbs of food that tempt you? Towards a person you never considered. A dream. Then later another series of dreams.

witnessed anything so obscene. The shocked silence among the boys in the