Michael Ondaatje Quotes

I knew that I had to write my memoirs.

Memory as an article of faith often comes naturally to writers, who by temperament are likely to be diarists and record keepers, forever searching past events for elusive patterns - and forever believing that such patterns are to be found.

True stories, autobiographical stories, like some novels, begin long ago, before the acts in the account, before the birth of some of the people in the tale.

Most writers, by the time they're 60, must have revisited their childhood a dozen times.

If you make a film about childhood, you've got to pick a moment - you know, 'The 400 Blows.'

The stories we hear in our childhood are the ones we remember all our lives.

Recounting their histories, people often sound like interested bystanders to their own lives.

When I was a little kid, before I learned how to write, I would tell stories.

Writing a novel is easier than writing a memoir; you are not constrained by the truth.

When I was a child, we used to look forward to the end of the day when we would hear another ten minutes of a story.

I'm very detail oriented. I think that's why people enjoy my memoirs - because I tend to remember everything.

I still feel, as I did when I was six or seven, that books are simply the best way to experience a story.

A memoir is my version of events. My perspective. I choose what to tell and what to omit. I choose the adjectives to describe a situation, and in that sense, I'm creating a form of fiction.

I just find that there's something about looking back on interviews, whether for purposes of remembering what I said about something or if it's for posterity when I'm 75.

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory.

Writers and believers live their lives haunted by the same question: What happens to our days once they disappear? The objective fact is that each day that passes is lost forever, as forbidden to us as the dead. But prayer and fiction offer a different answer. Those lost days still live among us, written in each person's hand, turned into stories.

I would never write a memoir, because it would be too boring.

All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography.

So as the years draw on toward the Biblical limit, the inclination to look back, and to tell some sort of story of what one has seen, grows upon most of us.

A certain point came when I wanted to document growing-up adventures.

I enjoy looking back on my life. I'm thinking seriously about starting to write about it.

Stories helped me unite parts of my existence that might otherwise have seemed irrevocably split by geography and time. And stories helped me find a future in which I, such a mongrel, could be comfortable.

There is a beauty in nature and culture that we no longer have access to. Those things you can't forget, you embroider... The further you tell, the further you travel from truth, which means, of course, that literature is a lie.

It's kind of hard to tell your life story and state all facts and it still be sweet.

Memory is a powerful thing for a writer.