Moments before sleep are when she feels most alive, leaping across fragments of the day, bringing each moment into the bed with her like a child with schoolbooks and pencils. The day seems to have no order until these times, which are like a ledger for her, her body full of stories and situations.
Michael OndaatjeYou are doing something over here and over there someone is telling you a joke, or giving you an important piece of information about sanitation, and no matter how weird the other subject is, there is a connection, or you can make a connection. I’ve always loved history and history is collage, it is a juxtaposition of the good and the bad and the strange, and how you place those sentences together changes the whole mood of a history.
Michael OndaatjeOver the years, confusing fragments, lost corners of stories, have a clearer meaning when seen in a new light, a different place.
Michael OndaatjeFathers die.You keep on loving them in any way you can.You can't hide him away in your heart.
Michael OndaatjeThere was a time when mapmakers named the places they travelled through with the names of lovers rather than their own.
Michael OndaatjeIf any of you on your journeys see her-shout to me, whistle...he sang, and it became a habit for audiences to shout and whistle in response to those lines. There was nowhere he could hide in such a song that had all of its doors and windows open, so that he could walk out of it artlessly, the antiphonal responses blending with him as if he were no longer on stage.
Michael Ondaatje