Michael Ondaatje Quotes

I have sought for happiness everywhere, but I have found it nowhere except in a little corner with a little book.

I have no desire to be a cat, which walks so lightly that it never creates a disturbance.

Anything for a quiet life.

When I go home and get off tour, I'd like to have a peace of mind. I like to chill. I don't like everything to be all chaotic like how it is when I step outside, you know?

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Happy are those who dwell apart from the harrowing tumults of public life!

Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye.

I enjoy the quiet life.

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.

I want to be able to live in a way that isn't too hectic. Calm. And I want those around me to be sublimely happy as well.

I like having peace and quiet in my life, and I am perfectly happy in my relationships.

It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale. So many things have been shown so to me on these banks, so much light has illumined me by reflection here where the water comes down, that I can hardly believe that this grace never flags, that the pouring from ever-renewable sources is endless, impartial, and free.

The simplification of life is one of the steps to inner peace.

The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.

There are times when life's just real quiet and simple. I sometimes get tired of people saying, "Well, what are you really like?"

I like a quiet life, you know me.

There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.

Nothing makes me feel better - calmer, clearer and happier - than being in one place, absorbed in a book, a conversation, a piece of music. It's actually something deeper than mere happiness: it's joy, which the monk David Steindl-Rast describes as 'that kind of happiness that doesn't depend on what happens.

Blessings upon all that hate contention, and love quietnesse, and vertue, and Angling.

Having the certitude of a succession of days... equally free and beautiful, peace descends on me.

A life of peace, purity and refinement leads to a calm and untroubled old age.

Altogether it will be found that a quiet life is characteristic of great men, and that their pleasures have not been of the sort that would look exciting to the outward eye.

There are few takers for the quiet heart.

Rest, nature, books, music...such is my idea of happiness.