Michael Ondaatje Quotes

I dwell in Possibility A fairer house than Prose More numerous of Windows Superior — for Doors.

When creative people do their best work, they're hardly ever in charge, they're just sort of rolling along with their eyes shut yelling wheee.

Whatever art offered the men and women of previous eras, what it offers our own, it seems to me, is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. The town I grew up in had many vacant lots; when I go back now, the vacant lots are gone. They were a luxury, just as tigers and rhinoceri, in the crowded world that is making, are luxuries. Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.

To make up a dance, I still need, as I needed then, a pot of tea, walking space, privacy and an idea.

I am absorbed in the magic of movement and light. Movement never lies. It is the magic of what I call the outer space of the imagination.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's life in space-time colored his liberated life of the imagination.

The art finds kingdoms in a foot of ground.

I love art because it doesn't have rules like baseball. The only rule is to be good. That's the toughest thing to do.

Don't be afraid to use all the colors in the crayon box.

The dense and godly wear consistency as a flower, the imaginative fling it joyfully behind them.

The joy is in creating, not maintaining.

Discipline gives you the freedom to be creative.

I'm inspired by everything, really. I'm inspired by locations and travel, I'm inspired by art and music, I'm inspired by people. When my curiosity peaks and I want to know everything about the subject, I want to know how I can get more deeply involved.

People say to write about what you know. I'm here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don't know anything. So write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.

I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

The imagination is never governed, it is always the ruling and divine power.

For the writer, the serial killer is, abstractly, an analogue of the imagination's caprices and amorality; the sense that, no matter the dictates and even the wishes of the conscious social self, the life or will or purpose of the imagination is incomprehensible, unpredictable.

All art is a form of artifice.For in art there can be no prejudices.

When I discovered dancing, I learned to dream.

Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration; authorship does not keep an office, its habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the creatures of God are free.

Start with a style and you are in chains, start with an idea and you are free.

If some people really see angels where others see only empty space, let them paint the angels: only let not anybody else think they can paint an angel too, on any calculated principles of the angelic.

When we are writing, or painting, or composing, we are, during the time of creativity, freed from normal restrictions, and are opened to a wider world, where colors are brighter, sounds clearer, and people more wondrously complex than we normally realize.