There's a lot of thievery involved in writing. You're breaking into other people's spaces and other people's stories.
Michael OndaatjeThe first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.
Michael OndaatjeThe last three books are much more a case of a moment of history, what happened almost by accident or coincidence, like being in the same elevator or lifeboat.
Michael OndaatjeBefore the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting.
Michael OndaatjeShe lights a match in the dark hall and moves it onto the wick of the candle. Light lifts itself onto her shoulders. She is on her knees. She puts her hands on her thighs and breathes in the smell of the sulphur. She imagines she slap breathes in light.
Michael OndaatjeBetween the kitchen and the destroyed chapel a door led into an oval-shaped library. The space inside seemed safe except for a large hole at portrait level in the far wall, caused by mortar-shell attack on the villa two months earlier. The rest of the room had adapted itself to this wound, accepting the habits of weather, evening stars, the sound of birds.
Michael Ondaatje