Michael Ondaatje

“Do you understand the sadness of geography?”

“The heart is an organ of fire.”

“Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there.”

“The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.”

“Stories are not about how things are, but how they are remembered.”

“Words are tricky. I've been writing for thirty years and I still don't know how to get them right.”

“We are searchers. We are seekers of the meaning of life.”

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

“A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it or offer your own version in return.”

“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom.”

“I believe in the pack. I believe that is what makes us whole.”

“What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.”

“Most of the time, I don't know what I'm doing.”

“The past is a country from which we have all emigrated.”

“I have always loved the gaps, the spaces between things, as much as the things.”

“A writer's job is to see the world as it is, and to see it as it could be.”

“I am a mongrel of place.”

“I'm not interested in the hero. I'm interested in the person who is not the hero.”

“I am a man who can be patient and wait. If I have to wait for fifteen years for a book, I will wait.”

“The best writing is not about the writer, it's about the reader.”