Michael Ondaatje citations

“« Il faut que tu partes, maintenant », dit-elle, et elle se leva, se dirigea vers la salle de bains puis ferma la porte derrière elle.

Cœur brisé, Ô

merveille intemporelle

Quel petit

espace où être”

“A bord de lOronsay, cependant, nous avions la chance d'échapper à tout ordre. Et je me réinventais au sein de ce monde apparemment imaginaire peuplé de démanteleurs de bateaux et de tailleurs, de passagers adultes qui, durant les festivités du soir, titubaient sous d'énormes masques de têtes d'animaux, tandis que certaines des femmes, à peine vêtues, dansaient, et que l'orchestre, Mr Mazappa au piano, jouait sur l'estrade, tous ses membres habillés de costumes exactement de la même prune.”

“En quittant la cabine d'Emily (et une telle intimité ne se renouvellerait pas), je savais que je serais toujours lié à elle par quelque rivière souterraine, ou filon de charbon ou d'argent — disons d'argent, car elle a toujours beaucoup compté pour moi. En mer Rouge, je suis sans doute tombé amoureux d'elle. Même si, quand je me suis arraché à elle, le magnétisme, quel qu'il soit, avait perdu sa force.

Combien de temps suis-je resté avec Emily dans ce qui m'avait paru un lit haut comme le ciel ? Quand nous nous étions revus, nous n'en avons pas reparlé. Elle ne se souvient peut-être même pas quel poids de chagrin elle m'a ôté ou a tenu, ni pendant combien de temps. Je n'avais jamais connu pareille étreinte, pareille odeur d'un bras émergeant du sommeil. Je n'avais jamais pleuré à côté de quelqu'un qui, aussi, m'excitait d'une manière mystérieuse. Pendant qu'elle baissait les yeux sur moi, il devait y avoir chez elle une certaine compréhension, ainsi que dans ses petits gestes pleins d'attention.”

“Il avait onze ans quand, ce soir-là, aussi neuf au monde qu'il pouvait l'être, il monta à bord du premier et unique navire de sa vie. On aurait dit qu'une ville s'était greffée à la côte, plus éclairée que n'importe quelle cité ou n'importe quel village. Il gravit la passerelle, le regard fixé sur le parcours de ses pieds — rien devant lui n'existait —, et il continua jusqu'à ce qu'il se retrouve face à la mer et au port plongés dans le noir. Dans le lointain se dessinaient les silhouettes d'autres bateaux dont les lumières s'allumaient. Seul, il respira toutes les odeurs, puis revint vers le bruit et la foule tournée vers la terre.”

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

“We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie.”

“All I ever wanted was a world without maps.”

“Her life with others no longer interests him. He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the minute secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book.”

“From this point on, she whispered, we will either find or lose our souls.”

“… the heart is an organ of fire.”

“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.”

“I'll be looking at the moon,
but I'll be seeing you.”

“This last night we tear into each other, as if to wound, as if to find the key to everything before morning.”

“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-occuopation.”

“Every night I cut out my heart. But in the morning it was full again”

“… sometimes we enter art to hide within it. It is where we can go to save ourselves, where a third-person voice protects us.”

“Don’t we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“He has been disassembled by her. And if she has brought him to this, what has he brought her to?”

“She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water.”

“You built your walls too, she tells him. So I have my wall. She says it glittering in a beauty he cannot stand. She with her beautiful clothes with her pale face that laughs at everyone who smiles at her…”

“A novel is a mirror walking down a road”

“For the first forty days a child
is given dreams of previous lives. Journeys, winding paths,
a hundred small lessons
and then the past is erased.”

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

“Could you fall in love with her if she wasn't smarter than you? I mean, she may not be smarter than you. But isn't it important for you to think she is smarter than you in order to fall in love? Think now.”

“Everyone has to scratch on walls somewhere or they go crazy”

“How does this happen? To fall in love and be disassembled.”

“The joyful will stoop with sorrow, and when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion”

“Do you understand the sadness of geography?”

“There is a story, always ahead of you. Barely existing. Only gradually do you attach yourself to it and feed it. You discover the carapace that will contain and test your character. You will find in this way the path of your life.”

“The trouble with all of us is we are where we shouldn't be.”