Michael Ondaatje

I believe this. When we meet those we fall in love with, there is an aspect of our spirit that is historian, a bit of a pedant who reminisces or remembers a meeting when the other has passed by innocently_but all parts of the body must be ready for the other, all atoms must jump in one direction for desire to occur.

the heart is an organ of fire

Aliganaya - 'the embraceduring an intoxicated walk'or 'sudden arousalwhile driving over speed bumps

Her life with others no longer interests him. He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the minute secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book.

Jung was absolutely right about one thing. We are occupied by gods. The mistake is to identify with the god occupying you.

We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie.

The Englishman left months ago, Hana, he's with the Bedouin or in some English garden with its phlox and shit.

Around three a.m. he feels a presence in the room. He sees, for the pulse of a moment, a figure at the foot of his bed, against the wall or painted onto it perhaps, not quite discernible in the darkness of foliage beyond the candlelight. He mutters something, something he had wanted to say, but there is silence and the slight brown figure, which could be just a night shadow, does not move. A poplar. A man with plumes. A swimming figure. And he would not be so lucky, he thinks, to speak to the young sapper again. He stays awake in any case this night, to see if the figure moves towards him. Ignoring the tablet that brings painlessness, he will remain awake till the light dies out and the smell of candle smoke drifts into his room and into the girl's room farther down the hall. If the figure turns around there will be paint on his back, where he slammed in grief against the mural of trees. When the candle dies out he will be able to see this. His hand reaches out slowly and touches his book and returns to his dark chest. Nothing else moves in the room. [298]

I can never understand someone by his strengths. Nothing is revealed there. I can only understand people by their weaknesses.

Do you understand the sadness of geography?

He knows that the only way he can accept losing her is if he can continue to hold her or be held by her. If they can somehow nurse each other out of this. Not with a wall.

Nowadays he doesn't think of his wife, though he knows he can turn around and evoke every move of her, describe any aspect of her, the weigh of her wrist on his heart during the night.

She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water.

She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.

The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.

The trouble with words is that you can really talk yourself into a corner. You can't fuck yourself into a corner."That's a man talking," muttered Hana.

In spite of her desire for a contained universe, her life felt scattered, full of many small moments, without great purpose. That is what she thought, though what is most untrustworthy about our natures and self-worth is how we differe in our own realities from the way we are seen by others.

What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power.