Michael Ondaatje Quotes

Poetry is essentially the discovery, the love, the passion for the name of everything.

I love exploring New York and I think that's what is so exciting about it. You find places that you've never heard of or seen before all the time.

I love history, cultural and religious studies, philosophy, photography and traveling.

I don't know about relationships. Maybe I'm supposed to travel and make films and meet people and have adventures instead.

Generally, I love traveling because it's great to see new places.

I go to Scotland maybe three times a year, and I love it. When I'm at home, I feel at home, I feel myself, I feel connected.

I love my passport. I plan trips very last minute, so I always carry it with me.

O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, you express me better than I can express myself.

I [had] added another small piece to the pages of the atlas that were real to me.

The world is a globe — the farther you sail, the closer to home you are.

I started out thinking of America as highways and state lines. As I got to know it better, I began to think of it as rivers.

The names of the cerros and the sierras and the deserts exist only on maps. We name them that we do not lose our way. Yet it was because the way was lost to us already that we have made those names. The world cannot be lost. We are the ones. And it is because these names and these coordinates are our own naming that they cannot save us. They cannot find for us the way again.

All my experiences removed geography from my world.

All places, no matter where, no matter what, are worth visiting.

I had a lot of things I wanted to do... I want to be a teacher...I also want to be an astronaut...and also make my own cake shop...I want to go to the sweets bakery and say "I want one of everything", ohhhh I wish I could live life five times over...Then I'd be born in five different places, and I'd stuff myself with different food from around the world...I'd live five different lives with five different occupations...and then, for those five times...I'd fall in love with the same person.

What is it about maps? I could look at them all day, earnestly studying the names of towns and villages I have never heard of and will never visit.

A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service.

That day, Miss Mdingane told me that my new name was Nelson. Why she bestowed this particular name upon me I have no idea. Perhaps it had something to do with the great British sea captain Lord Nelson, but that would be only a guess.

What is your name?" Why?" So I can mark your grave.

Chihiro, huh? Her real name's Chihiro? Can't beat the power of love.

Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

I longed to know the world's name.

A Warder once told me Trollocs call the Aiel Waste 'the Dying Ground.' I mean to make them give that name to the Two Rivers.

Once upon a time the world was round, and you could go on it around and around.