"There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross."

--

Source : Michael Ondaatje (2010). “Divisadero”, p.14, Bloomsbury Publishing

Michael Ondaatje

#Borders Quotes #Crosses Quotes

“Having a day job again I found really kind of fueled my fiction, because it became almost this forbidden thing where I had to sneak off and do it in private.”
“In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed. When a booby trap explodes, you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself. .. The pictures get jumbled, you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.”
“We tell ourselves that the more time we have at our disposal, the more opportunity we will have of finding greater happiness. But again we are looking to the future, to the times we will create. Again we miss the enjoyment of the present moment.”
“I want to see the birth of my baby. Hopefully it's a boy. He can play for St. John's.”
“I think humor is incredibly positive, I think it is life advancing. There's medical research to show that it improves your antibodies. It's all about sense and perspective.”
“I've seen many men die right in front of me - so many in fact that I've become almost hardened to it. Having seen the worst that human beings can do to each other, the results of torture, mutilation and seeing someone blown to pieces by a bomb, you develop a kind of shell. But you had to. You had to. Otherwise we would never have won.”

Source : "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.
“Language is the apparel in which your thoughts parade before the public.”
“Who hasn't sharpened the edge of his soul? When, just as our eyes are opened, we see hate, and just after learning to walk, we are tripped, and just for wanting to love, we are hated, and for no more than touching, we are hurt, which of us hasn't started to arm himself, to make himself sharp, somehow, like a knife, to pay back the hurt?”

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