Michael Ondaatje Quotes

Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasp'd no more - Behold me, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day.

You should not see the desert simply as some faraway place of little rain. There are many forms of thirst.

Being away from the game took a toll on my heart.

The chill of what I won't feel gnaws at my present heart.

McKenna will always be a part of me, no matter where he goes. They say that people who've lost a limb sometimes feel as if they still have it. How many times I've felt that McKenna was still here, and the empty space beside me was alive with his presence." She closed her eyes and leaned forward until her forehead and the tip of her nose touched the cool glass. "I love him beyond reason," she whispered. "He's a stranger to me now, and yet he is still so familiar. I can't imagine a sweeter agony, having him so close.

Arms now empty will be filled and hearts now hurting from broken dreams and yearning will be healed.

Little Words When you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf, Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds; And I can only stare, and shape my grief In little words. I cannot conjure loveliness, to drown The bitter woe that racks my cords apart. The weary pen that sets my sorrow down Feeds at my heart. There is no mercy in the shifting year, No beauty wraps me tenderly about. I turn to little words- so you, my dear, Can spell them out.

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

There is no pain greater than this; not the cut of a jagged-edged dagger nor the fire of a dragon's breath. Nothing burns in your heart like the emptiness of losing something, someone, before you truly have learned of its value.

In the desert the most loved waters, like a lover's name, are carried blue in your hands, enter your throat. One swallows absence.

Sometimes you can only feel something by its absence. By the empty spaces it leaves behind.

...the air so still it aches like the place where the tooth was on the morning after you’ve been to the dentist or aches like your heart in the bosom when you stand on the street corner waiting for the light to change and happen to recollect how things once were and how they might have been yet if what happened had not happened.

All we had was her room, her stories, and the quiet that settled in as we tried in vain to spread ourselves out and fill the space she'd left behind.

The essence of man is, discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.

Love is a hole in the heart.

Our past is who we are, and death is one of our experiences. I lost my husband a long time ago, but it's always yesterday.

If you lose a parent, it never goes away. As a kid, I dreamed about my father coming back for 15 or 20 years. I still do sometimes.

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal - every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open - this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.

This house was our dream-the gardens, the study, even the swimming pool. Even though I can't see John when I wake up in the morning, I can always feel him here with me.

Do you know what people want more than anything? They want to be missed. They want to be missed the day they don't show up. They want to be missed when they're gone.

I miss the camera each moment and each day.

There are moments when the grief comes bubbling up. The first time I saw Chris's chair empty, that was really hard. And it was hard when I started folding up some of his sweaters that I so imagine him wearing.

But to Sam the evening deepened to darkness as he stood at the Haven; and as he looked at the grey sea he saw only a shadow in the waters that was soon lost in the West. There he stood far into the night, hearing only the sigh and murmur of the waves on the shores of Middle-Earth, and the sound of them sank deep into his heart.

The numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with sobs. Where are you? I would cry out in my mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there was never any answer.

How can my old photographs fail to create in me a feeling of emptiness and sorrow? They make me acutely aware that this second deprivation will be final this time.